LTE | Connecting Futures

Brussels, September 2021

EUTC congratulates Members WPD (Virtual Access) and Nokia and Partner JRC on a new LTE project to develop learning on:

  • – Confirmation that LTE is a suitable solution for providing communications for the energy industry 
  • – Confirmation regarding using an Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) or Time Division Duplex (TDD) system 
  • – Confirmation on bandwidth requirements 
  • – Confirmation on types of data that can be passed over an LTE system 
  • – Confirmation on antenna solutions for different situations 
  • – Confirmation on training requirements and test equipment for staff

This project is the UK’s first multi-site, multi-vendor LTE trial designed to mimic on a small scale, and develop proposals for, the roll-out of a telecommunications network to support Active Management functionality. This is an important follow up to the a single vendor; single base station LTE evaluation trial at Portishead which provided data on the fundamental design and capabilities of LTE and illustrated how such a communications network might be integrated into WPD infrastructure. This showed that an LTE network is better equipped than a traditional narrow-band Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network in the harsh environment [e.g. electrically noisy sites, RF interference, multipath etc.] to be found in the context of an energy network and that the likely data throughput would be as predicted.

The project comes to the end at the end of June. During the month of June , updates to firmware of all 15 Encore Customer Premises Equipment (CPE’s) to the latest release was carried out which provides additional security features as a result of PEN testing conducted in Sweden. 

See more here.

European Utilities Telecom Council (EUTC) Aisbl is a non-profit organization delivering education, collaboration, best practices and thought leadership in telecommunication technology to utilities, other critical infrastructure providers and regulators, ensuring efficient, secure, sustainable and affordable smart infrastructure solutions. Moreover, the EUTC is the trusted advisor, source and resource of information and knowledge for its members and relevant policy makers regarding telecommunication technologies required by utilities and other critical infrastructure providers.