Power Line Communications Forum (PLC)
Contacts for this group:
John Ryan jryan@iee.org PLC specialist and official Consultant to ENA
This forum has been set up to represent the interests of the electricity industry regarding provision of telecommunications services over the LV power network by means of superimposed frequencies of 1.6 MHz and above.
Membership of the forum will be open to all companies with an interest in this type of technology.
PLC Regulation in Europe
Broadband over Powerline - European Regulatory Framework and Consultations
European organisations involved in standardisation in this area are CENELEC (electrotechnical) and ETSI (telecommunications) both of which are able to publish standards that may be harmonised under the EMC Directive (89/336/EEC).
In addition there is CISPR, which is the international standards organisation responsible for the protection of radio. Most CISPR standards are subsequently harmonised in Europe by CENELEC.
On the regulatory side each member state has its own national regulator to cover radio interference and to handle complaints. In the UK the regulator is now Ofcom, which replaced the Radiocommunications Agency (RA) on 29 December 2003.
In Germany the regulator is RegTP. In addition there are industry groups such as the PLCforum, the PUA (Powerline Utilities Alliance) and EURELECRIC (utilities). The later two are constituted in particular to lobby the European Commission. The agreed policy of the electricity industry has been that any emission standard should be technologically neutral and should not favour any one technology.
The European Commission has supported this and also has encouraged broadband powerline telecommunications as potential competition to incumbent telecommunication operators.
The new Broadband technologies such as ADSL and Powerline use existing wiring not originally designed for the purpose and the contentious issue is whether significant interference to radio might be caused. Powerline systems use the HF-band (short-wave), which is also used by the BBC World Service, some safety related services and radio amateurs.
However, some of these services are already moving to new delivery media, so there is also a new versus old technology issue. There are now significant deployments of broadband powerline systems in several European countries, with Germany taking the lead, despite the fact that this was originally a British invention.
Genuine complaints that are upheld by the regulator are few if any, despite an orchestrated campaign by radio amateurs. National regulators have robust powers to shut down any source of interference following a complaint.
Currently ADSL modems are CE-marked against EN55022 (the harmonised form of CISPR 22) and thus presume conformity with the EMC Directive. A proposed amendment to CISPR 22 to allow the same route to conformity for powerline modems is not yet in place, so conformity is being achieved via a Technical Construction File. The Austrian regulator challenged the legitimacy of this in the courts in April 2003, but the CE-marking was upheld.
Preliminary work on standards began in Europe about 5 years ago and then in 2000 CENELEC and ETSI formed a Joint Working Group (JWG) to jointly produce a network emission standard. In the meantime the European Commission became concerned that both the RA and RegTP had each produced their own network emission standards, which were seen by the Commission as a barrier to trade.
Pressure was applied for these to be rescinded and in August 2001 the Commission issued standardisation mandate M/313, which was accepted by CENELEC and ETSI to produce a harmonised network emission standard for such networks (DSL, Powerline, LAN, CATV).
This was taken up by the JWG, which has produced a draft standard, but not surprisingly has had difficulty in agreeing an emission limit to satisfy the contending interests (powerline manufacturers, utilities, telecommunications operators, broadcasters and radio amateurs). The current draft and questionnaire is undergoing a 6 month public enquiry that terminates on 20 February 2004.
However, there is some doubt as to whether a harmonised standard alone will solve the problem, which is primarily a problem of harmonising the individual approaches of national radio regulators. Furthermore harmonised standards may not contain regulatory statements, because these cannot be enforced.
Despite contention within the JWG, the European Commission has been aware that there have already been substantial deployments of broadband powerline systems in several countries without significant complaints of interference being upheld. The Commission therefore in January 2004 issued an additional 'request to develop a technical specification under mandate M313'.
The Commission subsequently intends to seek agreement from national regulators to allow a significant roll-out of broadband powerline systems across Europe that will be monitored by the regulators and which should conform to this Technical Specification. The emission limit in this Technical Specification, which will not be harmonised, will be set so as to allow deployment of state-of-the art powerline systems.
Data will be collected on emission levels and any incidents of interference and the results will be fed back into the harmonised standard being produced by the JWG.
John Ryan - JWG Secretary 5th February 2004
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