Telecom carriers are exiting central offices and gateway buildings faster than at any point since the copper retirement began. Cloud migration took the enterprise data centers; network consolidation is now taking the switching sites. The equipment rooms inside look different from a data center, and the removal plan should too. Here is what a buyer walks through, in the order it comes out.
A data center runs on AC through a UPS. A telecom site runs on 48V DC. The plant is a row of rectifiers that convert 480V AC to 48V DC, a controller and bus, and power distribution frames that feed the equipment rows. Older sites have ferroresonant rectifiers, Lorain and Marconi units that weigh over a thousand pounds each and are worth more as copper and iron than as equipment. Sites upgraded in the last decade have modular plants, Eltek or Vertiv, with hot swap rectifier bricks that resell as spares for a few hundred dollars apiece.
A 10,000 amp modular plant with 40 rectifiers is a real asset. A 1999 ferro plant is a removal job.
Every DC plant carries battery strings, usually 24 two volt cells per string on open racks. A single 1500 amp hour cell weighs about 250 pounds, so a mid size gateway with 30 strings has close to 200,000 pounds of lead acid on the first floor. Strings under five years old resell to other telecom sites. Everything older goes to a lead recycler, who pays by the pound and expects the loads placarded and palletized.
The battery count is the first thing we verify on a walk, because it sets the truck count.
Most central offices have one or two standby generators in the 1 to 2 MW class, often CAT 3512 or 3516 sets from the late 1990s with a few hundred hours on them. Those units routinely bring $150,000 to $350,000 each on the used market, and the 3000 amp bypass isolation transfer switches feeding them bring $30,000 to $40,000 apiece. In a typical site exit the generators alone are two thirds of the recoverable value.
The hours on the maintenance log are usually a decade old. Get a current meter reading before anyone prices them.
Telecom equipment rooms are cooled by glycol loop CRAC units with rooftop drycoolers. Twenty year old Liebert CRACs on a glycol loop only fit another glycol loop building, so they are worth little beyond parts. The drycoolers on the roof are the opposite: a 150 ton Vertiv drycooler from 2017 sells to anyone with a glycol loop, data center or industrial. Plan on a crane day for the roof and a scrap plan for the floor units.
Most sites also carry a small AC UPS plant for the office and network monitoring gear, along with a 3000 amp service board and distribution panels. Liebert Series 600 units from 2000 are parts value. The switchboards and panels resell if they are 2010 or newer.
A three floor gateway with two generators, a DC plant, 30 battery strings and 20 CRACs is roughly seven weeks for a four man crew with a licensed electrician on the disconnects, two crane days for the generators and two for the roof. The copper in the feeders and DC bus is significant, but a buyer who builds copper into the offer is overpaying, because the carrier may keep the wire or the restoration scope may change.
Powerhouse Systems buys the whole lot, does the removal with our own crew, and pays on removal. The carrier gets one contract, one crew, one asset list with serial numbers, and a broom clean space or a restoration scope, whichever the lease requires. If you are managing a central office or gateway exit, the fastest way to a number is the asset list. Send it to Patrick at (612) 599-5048 or through the decommissioning services page, and read how a similar project ran in our case studies.