Regulatory and Standardisation Issues

It is an unfortunate fact of life that using radio frequencies on wireline electronic communications networks causes low levels of unintentional electromagnetic radiation. Sometimes these emissions may cause harmful disturbances to radiocommunications services, which use the same frequencies. Every electronic network radiates to some extent, whether they use a twisted pair e.g. ADSL etc., use coaxial (screened) cable e.g. cable television networks, use the electrical distribution system e.g. power line communications or form part of a local area network (LAN) e.g. Ethernet or USB. Europe and the USA regulate unintentional radiation from networks in slightly different ways. In addition there are specific US Federal regulations, which address unintentional radiation from cable TV networks.

In Europe 3 bodies and 4 organisations are involved at the international level in the regulation and standardisation of EMC with respect to wireline electronic communications networks. TestTech personnel are actively involved in all of the key committees. The European Commission has an EMC Working Party in order to consult with Member States and Industry on matters relating to the current EMC Directive, 89/336/EEC and the new EMC Directive, 2004/108/EC, which was published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L 390/24, 31 December 2004. This will repeal Directive 89/336/EEC as from 20 July 2007 . The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications administrations (CEPT) has developed a Report and Recommendation in its Spectrum Engineering Working Group on the compatibility between networks and radiocommunication services and two of the European standardisation bodies, CENELEC and ETSI have established a Joint Working Group to develop a network EMC standard.