SARL urges amateur radio societies to lobby Cenelec

European Amateur Radio Societies are urged to lobby their national CENELEC members to make them aware of the shortcomings of a draft prEN50471 standard.

CENELEC, which is the European Committee for Electro technical Standardisation, was created in 1973 as a result of the merger of two previous European organizations: CENELCOM and CENEL.

Nowadays, CENELEC is a non-profit technical organization set up under Belgian law and composed of the National Electro-technical Committees of 28 European countries.

CENELEC's mission is to prepare voluntary electro-technical standards that help develop the Single European Market / European Economic Area for electrical and electronic goods and services removing barriers to trade, creating new markets and cutting compliance costs.

While 16 out of 28 countries have accepted the draft Telecommunications Network Standards, it will only be finalised in mid 2006.

The concern that the IARU Eurocom group has, is that the radiated field limits don't include frequencies below 30 MHz and that the standard does not specify radiated field but defines common mode currents. This means that the ownership lies with the victims, like radio amateurs and not the network owners. This is particularly important in the case of Power Line Communication. Generally South Africa follows the CENELEC standards. This draft standard is most likely to be considered by the various committees of the SABS in the near future.

In South Africa the first PLC system will be switched on mid January 2005 at Rooiwal, outside Pretoria. This will be the first major test for a new generation system which is said to minimally interfere with HF communication.

Without adequate standards to measure interference against, the task to keep radio communication interference free will be difficult, if not near impossible.

The SARL will watch developments closely. If you would like to know more about PLC, you can download the recent Intecnet audio file from www.amateurradio.org.za.
The file is 6.8 Mbyte.

Courtesy of The South African Radio League

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