In September 17, 1991, a failed AT&T switching station in New York put both Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange out of business for an entire day, with an estimated loss of billions of dollars in trading value. The failure resulted in 4.5 million blocked domestic long distance calls, nearly 500,000 interrupted international calls, and the loss of 80 percent of the Federal Aviation Administration's circuits.

This incident gave birth to the world's most advanced battery monitoring system - Batscan. In order to prevent further incidents AT&T started developing a system capable of monitoring batteries in central offices. Simultaneously the company also searched for similar systems worldwide. In March, 1992 AT&T came in contact with a Swedish company called Techtrade. Techtrade already had an advanced battery monitoring system that matched AT&Ts specifications. At this stage AT&T discontinued its own development and bought part of Techtrade's system. A joint development effort was made between Techtrade and AT&T. The goal was to further develop a battery monitoring system specifically for controllers in central offices.

Within a period of 6 months AT&T's controller, GALAXY was sold with an integrated Batscan battery monitoring system. Since then, Techtrade's Batscan has been further developed and adjusted towards new technologies.