Council Tackles Critical Telecom Approval Issues for New TCBs

FCC has formed a council that will work with the much-anticipated telecommunication certification bodies (TCBs) designed to relieve the burden of approvals on FCC. The council will address critical issues that remain or arise once the initial TCBs are named in June. Formation of the council fulfills FCC's Report and Order, which requires the TCBs to meet and discuss common issues, says William Hurst, vice president of Communication Certification Laboratory (Salt Lake City) and interim chair of the newly formed council.

The interim group will meet April 20 to formally establish the council, and the American Council of Independent Laboratories has agreed to serve as the council's secretary. In addition to the TCBs, membership is open to any interested parties, including manufacturers and test laboratories. All 13 TCB applicants have expressed interest in being members, Hurst says. "It is intended to be a forum to bring the TCBs and interested parties together to address common issues. In the past, FCC made all the decisions," he says. "As you get multiple bodies certifying products, how do you ensure consistency?"

FCC, NIST, and ANSI will continue to participate in the council's meetings, although they will not formally sit on the council. "It's fully anticipated that FCC will continue to participate. And, obviously, when FCC speaks, everyone listens," Hurst says.

The biggest benefit for telecom manufacturers, says Robert Goldhill, program manager for NVCASE at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD, will be time to market. "The TCBs will be surrogate FCCs," says Goldhill, "capable of evaluating products in essentially the same way FCC does," he says. "Certain functions, like taking back a grant, will remain FCC decisions, but the speed at which a TCB can approve a product should be much greater than FCC."

Hurst says that manufacturers are extremely unhappy with the delays in getting products approved. He says he expects the TCBs to approve products within a week rather than the current two-to-three month period. The ability to select a TCB will also enable manufacturers to seek approval closer to where the product is designed.

Market surveillance is currently the most pressing issue for the TCB council to address. "There's a requirement specified that TCBs are to perform some surveillance of the products they certify. The council must try to come up with a common understanding of what level of market surveillance each TCB is supposed to provide," says Hurst. "One of the concerns raised is that unless we define what surveillance must be performed, a TCB might be motivated to perform minimal surveillance."

Hurst says this is a typical example of the types of issues the council will be called on to resolve. The council is already drafting a white paper outlining its position on this particular issue for FCC and ANSI to review. "Our position is that each TCB needs to define what market surveillance it plans to perform and that ANSI would assess each TCB's plan."

Each TCB is required to have a market surveillance program in place to monitor all of the products it certifies. And if a TCB accepts testing done by another laboratory, the TCB must also develop a program for surveillance of those products. "There needs to be some surveillance program in place. What's not spelled out," says Hurst, "is what they specifically have to do." ANSI's job is to determine whether a TCB's surveillance program is sufficient. "That's the challenge," he says. "FCC would feel better, of course, if ANSI had a list of minimum requirements to ensure consistency."

Hurst says ANSI has not defined the specific requirements for accepting data from the manufacturers themselves. Currently, each TCB is expected to define what criteria it will require of the manufacturer submitting the test data. FCC does anticipate that such data will be similar to what it currently requires. "As I've looked at it as someone applying to be a TCB," Hurst says, "I've taken what the FCC does and put that down into my definition of what we're going to do. So really, FCC is saying 'You've got some flexibility to do what you want, but our intent is for it to be based on what we do today.'"

The council, he says, has also agreed to develop guidelines better defining what TCBs should do on an ongoing basis. "FCC had at one time considered a probationary period for TCBs, but now plans only to spot-check to monitor the program," says Goldhill. "We don't want anything to stop the new TCBs from operating come June 1," Hurst says, "but some things must still be resolved."

Another issue the TCB council has resolved temporarily involves TCB accreditation. Although FCC had required that TCBs be accredited to ISO Guide 25, NAVLAP didn't have programs to accredit to all testing scopes listed for TCBs, according to Hurst. "It was agreed that TCBs would not be required to have their testing capabilities accredited." Resolving this issue makes it easier for TCBs to get approved because ANSI will be responsible for assessing whether a TCB can provide a given testing capability. "If a TCB indicated that it can test to a certain scope, ANSI will review that in its assessment." The council will, however, continue to address this issue, he says.

To get the TCB program off the ground, FCC has initially limited applicants to U.S.-based companies. The impetus for creating the TCB program was to fulfill FCC's mutual recognition agreement with Europe. "The Europeans insisted that they be allowed to certify products in Europe. The TCB program will allow that to happen," Hurst says.

To become a TCB, however, FCC requires a core set of testing capabilities. Much discussion has centered around the idea that a TCB is really a certification body and not a testing laboratory. "Europeans think this is a violation of that separation, even though most European certified bodies also have testing capabilities. The European certification bodies are arguing that they shouldn't have to meet this core test requirement," he says.

In the United States, all of the current applicants have some testing capabilities, so this requirement will not likely present any problems. The only area of concern, Hurst says, has been specifying what those core test capabilities entail, with particular confusion surrounding testing above 1 GHz. "The real intent," he says, "was that you must demonstrate you can do some testing, but there are no rules that specify how high you have to go."

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ETSI Awarded for Work on GSM Standard

Cannes, France–The GSM Association conferred its Chairman's Award on ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) at the GSM World Congress in February, recognizing the organization's contribution to the development, growth, and success of the GSM standard. Chairman of the ETSI Special Mobile Group (SMG) Friedhelm Hillebrand accepted the award on behalf of the organization.

According to Hillebrand, GSM now serves more than 142 countries worldwide and allows users true worldwide roaming. "The SMG community will continue to evolve the GSM system standard," he says, "to maintain the technology's leading position in the world."

Development of standards for the GSM family of public digital mobile communications systems with a built-in capability for unrestricted worldwide roaming of users and terminals between any networks belonging to the family is the mission of the ETSI Technical Committee (TC) SMG. First known as the Groupe Special Mobile or GSM, the TC SMG was created by the European Conference of Post and Telecommunications (CEPT) in 1982. When ETSI was started in 1988, the GSM was transferred from CEPT. The committee changed its name to ETSI SMG in 1992.

ETSI is currently focusing on development of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard based on the evolved GSM core network. "The UMTS standard will bridge the gap between mobile telecommunications and the Internet," says ETSI director-general Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, "as well as make global roaming a reality." For more information, visit the ETSI Web site at http://www.etsi.org.

EMC Standards Update

The European Commission has published a new list of references for harmonized standards under the EMC Directive 89/336/EEC. The following list was published in January. New standards and amendments include the following:

EN 50270: 1999

Electrical apparatus for the detection and measurement of combustible gases, toxic gases or oxygen. Required from October 1, 2001.

A1: 1999 to EN 55011: 1998

Permits other measurement distances; a peak detector may be used above 1 GHz for some equipment; establishes limits for microwave ovens in the frequency range of 1 to 18 GHz. Required from August 1, 2002.

A14: 1999 to EN 55013: 1990

Remote controls, receiver cards for PCs, etc. Required from August 1, 2001.

A2: 1999 to EN 55014-1: 1993

New procedure for electric fences. Required from October 1, 2001.

A2: 1999 to EN 55015: 1996

Specifies measurement on emergency lighting luminaires. Required from October 1, 2001.

A12: 1999, A13: 1999, and A14: 1999 to EN 55020: 1994

Adds remote controls and receiver cards for PCs to products that can be tested using burst, ESD, and keyed carrier tests at 900 MHz. Required from August 1, 2001.

EN 60947-3: 1999

Low-voltage switch gear and control gear Part 3: Switches, disconnectors, switch-disconnectors, and fuse-combination units. Replaces EN 60947-3: 1992 from January 1, 2002.

A2: 1998 to EN 60947-4-2: 1996

Required from July 1, 2001.

EN 60947-5-2:1998

Low-voltage switch gear and control gear Part 5-2: Control circuit devices, switching elements, and proximity switches. Required from October 1, 2001.

EN 61000-6-2: 1999

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) Part 6-2: Generic standards. Immunity for industrial environments required from April 1, 2002, when it replaces EN 50082-2: 1995.

A14: 1998 to EN 61008-1: 1994

Required from January 1, 2001.

EN 61326: 1997

Replaces reference number EN 61326-1.

EN 61812-1: 1996 and A11: 1999

Specified time relays for industrial use Part 1: Requirements and tests. Required from January 1, 2002.