Utilities
Finding our feet
Bobbi Harris, member engagement and operations lead at the Utility Broadband
Alliance (UBBA), discusses how her organisation came to be and its next steps
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www.criticalcomms.com September 2019
Can you start by telling us a bit about why the
UBBA was formed
The UBBA was formed over about the last 12 months;
the idea came about organically as some utilities and
technology providers in the US were keen to understand
what are the options and requirements and opportunities
and challenges of private broadband solutions for utility
operations. As talks began, the key stakeholders decided that
they needed to form an alliance so that they could formally
come together on a very regular basis and share ideas, ask
questions and create something that the utility industry,
even around the world, could use.
We soft-launched the UBBA at Distributech this past
February, and I joined in April. Initially we thought that eight
to 10 utilities and vendors would be really interested, but 30
people in the room were, and since that time our membership
has risen to 19 organisations, of which five are utilities and
the other 14 are vendors. About 60 individuals from those 19
organisations participate in our working groups.
What are the alliance’s current priorities and
areas of focus?
We surveyed our original members to determine what
areas UBBA should focus on; they came up with four and
we created a working group for each of them. There’s the
business working group, which is exploring how utilities can
make the business case for private broadband solutions, so
they’re looking at things like OPEX and CAPEX financial
models and ways which some utilities may be able to
recuperate some of the associated costs, along with the
broadband infrastructure opportunities beyond operational
usage. So, a lot of the dialogue around smart cities comes
into play in that working group.
We also have a technology working group, which is
creating a reference architecture and is looking a little
bit at spectrum allocation, alternatives, availability and
enablement. There’s the use cases working group, which
informs the industry on current and future use-cases
driving the business, technical and operational requirements
for private broadband networks. Finally, there’s the
cybersecurity working group – this is crucial and there’s a
big difference when you’re talking about private broadband
versus a public carrier network. It is putting together the
cybersecurity requirements, based on current standards,
such the NIST standards, as we’re not trying to reinvent
the wheel. It’s looking at the privacy and security issues
around private broadband networks versus other types of
broadband, and they’re creating some documentation. All
of our working groups meet weekly or biweekly and are
delivering tools for use by our members if they’re going out
for an RFI or an RFP on broadband.
What about voice? To what extent are your
members looking at migrating their LMR users
over to broadband networks?
There is a lot of discussion about that and the associated
requirements, what would that need to look like and what
are the requirements there. This is a part of what our use
cases working group is focused on, given the extent to which
push-to-talk and LMR are used by the utility workforce
and for asset and outage management. The work is just
getting under way, but we’re hoping to publish something
on this topic.
Do wider changes in the utility sector such as
the rise of distributed generation and electric
vehicles have any implications for utilities’ use of
private LTE networks and their deployment?
As they involve two-way power flow, there’s more things
utilities have to communicate with and monitor. As we add
more sensors, it becomes even more critical to have resilient
broadband or private broadband. There’s also the need
to be able to prioritise critical data traffic such as alarms,
so that they are received quickly and not delayed due to
other traffic.
I should also mention video surveillance and drone
surveillance. A lot of utilities are beginning to use drones to
assess the condition of their assets, and that’s another usecase
for broadband. Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS)
use of drones is crucial for utilities, particularly if you’re
trying to restore power after an outage. We saw this last
year in Houston; CenterPoint Energy was able to get special
permission from the FAA to fly its drones beyond visual line
of sight, as while it was trying to restore the power, it needed
to assess the damage – as it couldn’t reach the affected
areas with its trucks, the safest way was to use drones. I
think you’re going to see more discussion around BVLOS
licensing for utilities, particularly in outage situations.
Our utility members don’t want to be
competing for bandwidth with every
pizza delivery guy or garage door opener,
and the telecommunications sector
has to bear this in mind
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