Patent ID: 8332663

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a gateway device for communicating with an access network via a network interface device (NID), for receiving power initially provided by a battery back-up and a power processing unit, and for providing power to the NID, the gateway device being adapted to provide power to operate the NID when communicating with a non-electrical access network, the gateway device further adapted to supply power to support at least one data device communicating with the access network via the gateway device, to detect a status of the battery back-up and the power processing unit, and to transmit at least one data signal reflecting the detected status via the gateway device to the NID for subsequent transmission to the non-electrical access network; a power injection unit configured to receive power signal from the gateway device and inject the received power signal into a data communication cable between the gateway device and the NID; and a power extraction unit configured to extract the injected power signal from the data communication cable and to provide the extracted power signal to the NID.