AT&T Burned by Green Tech

January 22, 2008

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On Christmas this past year at an AT&T facility in Wisconsin, a series of fires sparked by explosions of green backup batteries in its U-verse network cabinets culminated in a major explosion, Information Week reports.

It isn’t yet clear what the problem was. But one report claims that these lithium-metal-polymer batteries “have failed at least four times now,” and this mishap serves as another cautionary tale for the author of this piece about the possible unfavorable, unintended consequences of companies rushing to go green.

According to this article, other problems companies face in their haste to green up their IT and telecom equipment is higher equipment costs, marginal energy savings and dubious profitability. As for AT&T in Wisconsin, as if the explosions weren’t enough, the company that manufactured the batteries, Avestor, folded in October of 2006.

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