Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Adrian Grilli Managing Director, JRC Ltd, London

Technical Adviser, European Utility Telecom Council, Brussels

Chairman, Federation of Communications Services CNI Group, UK

Spectrum Forum – Cluster 1 Spectrum Applications and Requirements

UTILITIES

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – scope of sector

PEOPLE – not a lot

Maximum about 3000 per company

SERVICES – Gas: transmission & distribution

Electricity: generation, transmission & distribution (NOT supply)

Water: clean water supply & waste water disposal, plus environment & flood control.

DEVICES – lots!

Currently 10,000 per typical company, rising to 100,000 or more by 2020.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – contribution to social & economic value

GAS – industrial & domestic fuel – majority of UK households use for space & water heating.

Important fuel for electricity generation.

WATER – important for industry, but essential for life!

Waste disposal as critical as fresh water supply.

Power stations often require large quantities of water.

ELECTRICITY – the economy depends on a reliable, secure and cost effective source of electricity.

Social welfare requires electricity.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – current, recent & past changes

PAST – telecoms always important to support networks, but utility networks historically dumb.

CURRENT – increasing use of telecoms, both fixed and radio; but radio has unique properties in terms of speed of deployment, cost and resilience.

FUTURE – networks are becoming more intelligent, requiring massive increase in communications.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – sector trends

Increasing societal dependence on utilities for quality of and sustaining life in developed countries;

Infrastructure upgrades cannot keep pace with changing demands, hence ICT applied to increase efficiency.

Cost of utility services and security of supply becoming political focus.

Security of networks becoming an increasing cause of concern as application of ICT makes networks more vulnerable to attack.

All elements of the critical national infrastructure depend on a reliable source of electricity.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – use of technologies & spectrum FIXED v WIRELESS – large use made of both fixed and

radio communications: fixed uses copper, wireless and communications through electricity cables.

TECHNOLOGIES – wide deployment of a variety of technologies using both private & public networks. telecoms always important to support networks, but networks historically dumb.

SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS – data rates not increasing in the same way as consumer demands. Data flows upload centric: resilience, redundancy, distributed control vital.

SPECTRUM – lower frequencies essential to facilitate construction of resilient architectures and widespread geographic coverage.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – anticipated changes – near term

Pace of change driven by energy & environment policies.

Carbon reduction targets will focus even more attention on electricity as political pressure drives supply from large centralised controllable generation towards widely dispersed smaller scale intermittent sources of energy.

Interconnection of grids and interdependencies between critical national infrastructures will require more intensive deployment of telecoms, often by radio as fixed networks cannot be rolled out quickly enough.

Balance between public and private networks in utility telecoms will be influenced by perceptions of the risk of the consequences of large scale power outages.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum and

technology work for your business

Utilities – anticipated changes – long term Distributed assets will increase the instability of

networks, requiring more advanced ICT solution, distributed control and more time critical telecomms.

Deployment of fibre may displace some radio comms, but most likely that growth in telecoms requirements will always outstrip fibre’s ability to service requirements on an appropriate timeframe.

Public networks may become increasingly consumer-focused, leaving critical telecoms a niche sector.

Licensed low frequency spectrum (below 2GHz) will become increasingly important for resilience.

Role of VHF spectrum in future scenarios uncertain.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum work for your business

European Radio Spectrum Policy Programme (RSPP)

• Article 9.1 - An inventory

• Article 9.4 - A requirements study

Article 8.2

The Commission shall, in cooperation with the Member States,

conduct studies on saving energy in the use of spectrum in

order to contribute to a low-carbon policy, and shall consider

making spectrum available for wireless technologies with a

potential for improving energy saving and efficiency of other

distribution networks such as water supply, including smart

energy grids and smart metering systems.

Joint Radio Company:

Making the spectrum work for your business

EUTC Spectrum Proposal

Europe - multiple small allocations within harmonised bands:

• VHF spectrum (50-200 MHz) for resilient voice comms &

distribution automation for rural and remote areas. [2 x 1 MHz]

• UHF spectrum (450-470 MHz) for SCADA & automation.

[2 x 3 MHz]

• Lightly regulated or deregulated shared spectrum for

smart meters and mesh networks (870-876 MHz).

• L-band region (1500 MHz) for more data intensive smart

grid, security and point-to-multipoint applications. [10 MHz]

• Public microwave & satellite bands (1.5-58 GHz) for

access to utilities’ core fibre network or strategic resilient back-haul.