21815 - SCTE Broadband Feb2023 COMPLETE v3

48 Vol. 45 No. 1 - February 2023 Issue The EU commission clarifies new requirements for harmonised standards, and fibre optic systems hits a high with the quantity of new standards. By David Hodges, Chair, SCTE Standards and Technical Committee CENELEC Update Standards Another year has passed and our annual meetings of CENELEC TC 209 and IEC TC100/TA05 during November 2022 were again online, not face-to-face. In fact, BSI are encouraging us through EPL/100 only to have one face-to-face meeting per year. While this saves money and possibly the spread of Covid, online meetings lose that personal interaction and are not as constructive. The year has been full of disappointments from the EU Commission as they have changed the rules on Harmonised standards. It is no longer acceptable for our standards to reference another standard unless that standard is already a Harmonised standard. Harmonised standards are very important to us in that complying to them gives a presumption of conformity to the directive to which they relate. For instance, our standard BS EN 60728-11 defines for our industry, the requirements of the Low Voltage Directive and standard BS EN 50083-2, the EMC directive. I am working group convenor for WG1, EN 60728-11, despite the standard passing the CDV technical standard stage and any day now the FDIS final comment stage, it is unlikely the Commission will accept it for listing in the UJ. This will result in the existing issue edition 4 remaining and the new part 5 will go on to become IEC 60728-11 ed 5 only, not harmonised. I will then need to write the non-harmonised references out of the standard and resubmit the standard to the EU consultants. Reporting on the CENELEC working groups below I list them in working group order. Acronyms used: CD Committee Draft CDV Committee Draft for Vote CC Compilation of Comments from the Vote EMC Electro-Magnetic Compatibility EN European Standards FDIS Final Draft International Standard IEC International Electrotechnical Commission RED Radio Equipment Directive TR Technical Report WG Working Group from the industry