Fixed Line Technology for Utility Infrastructure

This presentation will outline the traditional approach used by electricity companies all over the world to provide electricity distribution companies with telecom services to support their businesses. It will chart the development of new business drivers which affected the UK electricity sector through the 1990s and which changed the perspective on the best way to deliver telecoms to meet an increasing business requirement for data bandwidth and voice connectivity as the companies reacted to all stakeholder demands. The presentation considers how fixed telecoms networks can help to create the ‘best in class' energy networks of the future as they migrate through further change in response to new environmental, government, stakeholder and customer demands. New technologies will undoubtedly be required, but the need for lower-cost, reliable, resilient and fully flexible solutions may change the telecom service delivery models from those we recognise today. Next-generation telecom networks are about to become a reality but present the utility companies with some real challenges. In looking at the energy networks of the future, it must be recognised that they will evolve from the networks of today. Whatever the energy network vision, the development cycle for replacing electricity network assets will be long compared to the telcoms technology lifecycle.