During normal operations, there’s less of an urgent need for
it, but being able to send a drone up beyond line of sight in
mountainous or very rural areas to do asset and maintenance
checks would save a lot of money, time and manpower,
while also being a lot safer.
To what extent are you looking at CBRS as a
possible opportunity or as a means of getting
access to spectrum?
We are loosely partnering with the CBRS Alliance. We’re
happy to work with other alliances or standards bodies –
again it’s about not trying to reinvent the wheel; we’re going
to stay in our lane, but we’re also going to talk to them to
make sure that the utilities are the ultimate beneficiary of
all of our work. Speaking more generally about spectrum,
in the US, licensed spectrum in the 900MHz band is vital
for utilities, and licensed spectrum is important as the
protection from the inference it provides helps cut down on
latency and jitter issues.
Staying on the topic of working with other
bodies, are you looking to influence the
development of 3GPP technology to meet the
needs of the utilities sector?
We’re not there yet, but again we’re open to those
discussions. As we’re just getting our feet under us, the
more you talk about things, the more you find that there
are other groups and other standards bodies that we need to
participate with.
How much is the UBBA focusing on network
slicing and 5G, given that some believe these
will allow applications that previously could
only be supported by private networks to run on
public networks?
The hope of 5G clearly has everyone interested. We’re letting
the utilities drive how fast 5G will be added to the playbook.
Some utilities – not just UBBA members – believe that for
utility operations, 5G opportunities may be still five or so
years away.
We’re to include content in our deliverables about 5G and
private LTE and what it means for broadband for utilities –
Bobbi Harris CV
Recognised as one of the 2019 Global Smart
Energy Elites, Bobbi Harris is the founder of
Smart Water Smart City and serves the Utility
Broadband Alliance (UBBA) as its membership
engagement and operations lead. Harris is a utility
telecommunications and smart city industry expert
and in her more than 15 years as a global strategic
marketing professional has focused on utility issues,
drivers and technologies to address water and
energy challenges including smart cities, cleantech
and green building initiatives. Her insights are sought
by key stakeholders, including elected officials,
investors, water and electric utility leaders and
technology executives worldwide.
for example, how smart city applications that use 5G will be
connected to or supported by utilities.
The number-one issue for utilities is resilience –
telecommunications have to have five 9s availability, hence
our work on private broadband networks; our utility
members don’t want to be competing for bandwidth with
every pizza delivery guy, home baby monitoring system or
garage door opener, and the telecommunications sector has
to bear this in mind.
That said, the hope is that with smart infrastructure,
excess bandwidth or excess services can be shared –
removing the need to deploy yet another system. I’ve seen
varying degrees of success with network sharing. I think
it depends on the ownership of the infrastructure; so, for
example, if the municipality owns the electric utility, which
deploys broadband across the municipal footprint, some
options open up, things like street lighting control and
sharing bandwidth with water and gas utilities.
The UBBA’s members
1. 4RF
2. Ameren
3. Burns & McDonnell
4. Cisco Systems
5. Council Rock
6. Encore Networks
7. Ericsson
8. Federated Wireless
9. General Electric
10. Motorola Solutions
11. Multi-Tech Systems
12. National Grid
13. Anterix
14. Sierra Wireless
15. Sonim Technologies
16. Southern Linc
17. Tait Communications
September 2019 @CritCommsToday 33