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11Aug2006
If youve been following the random stories throughout the site, you might just remember a mention of my
summer co-op job at Emerson Network Power (if not, you can refer to this post). The summer has gone well;
Ive made some cash, learned some new tricks, and added a nice new section to my resume. However, there
was one little problem that arose
All telephony equipment operates on negative forty-eight volt DC power systems. I was introduced to this fact
of life at the beginning of the summer, and I found it very odd. Not the fact that its forty-eight volts or that its
DC, but that its negative (the positive terminals of the batteries are ground). Why the heck was that voltage
negative? Anyway, summer continued, I got busy, and I forgot about this little question. Fast forward to the end
of summer
I was sitting in on a division meeting listening to the engineers discuss various aspects of the projects they
were working on, when suddenly my supervisor turned to me and asked So what have you learned this
summer? Caught off guard, I immediately turn red and began to stammer something about AutoCAD and
plant operations and Pro Engineer when he cuts me off and says, No, what did you learn? So then I
mumbled something about how telephones and telecommunications networks work, and in doing so,
mentioned the oddity of that negative voltage. Immediately he went Ah ha! And just like that I had a new
research assignment.
After a few days of poring over large communications theory books, searching the Internet, and scratching my
head, I knew why the power system was forty-eight volts DC, but no idea why it was negative. After about week
of searching, I finally broke down and asked; here is what I learned.
Telephony equipment uses forty-eight volts DC for very simple reasons: DC does not introduce noise on the
line and is easily produced from regular lead-acid (vehicle) batteries which just happen to come in twelve-volt
increments (due to the chemical properties of the battery). Forty-eight volts is high enough to be efficient while
still being considered a safe low voltage and being a multiple of twelve (four batteries make up one string).
The negative polarity is much more elusive, but can be summed up in one word: corrosion. Thanks to a bit of
research performed by Sir Humphry Davy for the British Navy, we have a technology known as cathodic
protection. First developed to keep the copper hulls of British naval ships from corroding, this technology has
been applied to protecting everything from oilrigs to gas pipelines to telephony cabinets. By keeping the cabinet
frame at a more positive voltage than ground, corrosion is reduced and the life of the equipment is increased.
Who would have guessed?
Other answer:
You should also keep this in mind that all of USA uses 24 (+Ve) system not 48 (-Ve) system. Hence all
the arguments do not really hold much grounds. these are two different systems, that's all. the
voltages had to be in the multiples of basic 2 V hence -48 V or 24 V, actually it turns out to be -54 V
and +27V respectively. However there is one fact though, positive ground is more efficient then
negative ground.