Patent ID: 8670663

Claim:
A method for notifying an optical line termination of a power failure, comprising: receiving a notification of a power failure from a power supply coupled to an optical network termination, the notification indicating that a battery backup within the power supply falls below a threshold voltage; in response to receiving the notification, terminating each power-consuming device on the optical network termination except a transfer protocol module within the optical network termination, the transfer protocol module adapted to solely transmit a dying gasp alarm to the optical line termination; upon terminating each power-consuming device, receiving power from a dedicated power storage unit dedicated to providing power to the transfer protocol module; and transmitting, via the transfer protocol module, the dying gasp alarm to the optical line termination utilizing at least a portion of the power from the dedicated power storage unit, the dying gasp alarm notifying the optical line termination of the power failure, wherein the battery backup powers each power-consuming device on the optical network termination, and the dedicated power storage unit powers only the transfer protocol module, and wherein transmitting the dying gasp alarm to the optical line termination comprises transmitting the dying gasp alarm a first time to the optical line termination via a physical layer operations and maintenance message and transmitting the dying gasp alarm a second time to the optical line termination via an optical network termination management and control interface message.