461

Telecommunication Service Provisioning and

Delivery in the Electrical Power Utility

Working Group
D2. 26

April 2011

Telecommunication Service Provisioning and

Delivery in the Electrical Power Utility

Working Group
D2.26

April 2011
Members
Mehrdad MESBAH, Convenor (France), Robert EVANS (Australia) Dugald BELL (Australia),
Jan PIOTROWSKI (Poland) Jorge MENDES (Portugal) Pedro GAMA (Portugal),
Ion NEDELCU (Romania), Matjaz BLOKAR (Slovenia) Paul SCHWYTER (Switzerland),
Paul RENSHALL (United Kingdom) Claudio TRIGO de LOUREIRO (Brazil),
Elton BANDEIRA de MELO (Brazil) Suzana JAVORNIK VONCINA (Croatia),
Janine LEIFER (Israel) Masayuki YAMASAKI (Japan) Kazuto IWASAKI (Japan),
Eva LASSNER (Hungary) Lhoussain LHASSANI (Netherland) Olav STOKKE (Norway),
Jorge FONSECA (Portugal) Pedro MARQUES (Portugal) Danilo LALOVIC (Serbia),
Juan Antonio GARCIA LOPEZ (Spain)

Copyright 2011
Ownership of a CIGRE publication, whether in paper form or on electronic support only infers right
of use for personal purposes. Are prohibited, except if explicitly agreed by CIGRE, total or partial
reproduction of the publication for use other than personal and transfer to a third party; hence circulation on any intranet or other company network is forbidden.

Disclaimer notice
CIGRE gives no warranty or assurance about the contents of this publication, nor does it accept
any responsibility, as to the accuracy or exhaustiveness of the information. All implied warranties
and conditions are excluded to the maximum extent permitted by law.

ISBN: 978-2-85873-150-3

1
2

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................5
COMMUNICATION SERVICE IN THE POWER UTILITY ............................................8
2.1
Introduction...................................................................................................................8
2.2
EPU Communication Services......................................................................................9
OPERATIONAL APPLICATIONS ...................................................................................13
3.1
Protection Communication .........................................................................................13
3.1.1
State Comparison Protection Schemes (Command Schemes)............................15
3.1.2
Teleprotection Signalling Systems .....................................................................16
3.1.3
Analog Comparison Protection Schemes............................................................17
3.1.4
System-wide Protection Schemes .......................................................................17
3.2
Energy Management, SCADA and WAMS Communications ...................................18
3.2.1
SCADA Communications...................................................................................18
3.2.2
Inter-Control Centre Communications ...............................................................19
3.2.3
Remote Control Centre Operator Consoles ........................................................20
3.2.4
Generation Control Signaling .............................................................................20
3.2.5
Wide Area Monitoring System (PMU Communications) ..................................20
3.3
Remote Substation Control and Automation ..............................................................22
3.4
Operational Telephone System ...................................................................................22
3.5
Settlement and Revenue Metering and Customer Communications ..........................24
3.5.1
Energy Metering in the Deregulated Environment.............................................24
3.5.2
Customer Metering, Advanced Metering Infrastructure.....................................24
3.5.3
Advanced distribution applications and Smart Grid...........................................25
OPERATION SUPPORT APPLICATIONS......................................................................26
4.1
Collaborative Multi-media Communications .............................................................26
4.2
On-line Documentation...............................................................................................26
4.3
Substation Automation Platform Management...........................................................27
4.4
Condition and Quality Monitoring Communications .................................................27
4.5
Substation data Retrieval ............................................................................................27
4.6
Mobile Workforce Communications ..........................................................................28
SECURITY, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING................................29
5.1
Security of Sites and Assets........................................................................................29
5.1.1
Video-surveillance of sites..................................................................................29
5.1.2
Site Access Control.............................................................................................29
5.1.3
Environmental Hazards Monitoring (Sites and Assets)......................................30
5.1.4
Intruder Detection ...............................................................................................30
5.2
Human Safety & Operational Security .......................................................................30
5.2.1
Earth Connection Monitoring .............................................................................30
5.2.2
Isolated Worker Safety Communications ...........................................................30
5.2.3
Public Warning Communications .......................................................................31
5.2.4
Hydraulic Structure Operation and Maintenance Applications ..........................32
5.3
Cyber-Security applications communication..............................................................34
OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS AND SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS ...............35
6.1
Operational Coverage and Topology ..........................................................................35
6.2
Time Constraints.........................................................................................................36
6.3
Availability Constraints ..............................................................................................39
6.4
Service Survivability and Resilience ..........................................................................41

6.5
Service Security Constraints .......................................................................................43
6.6
Service Integrity..........................................................................................................44
6.7
Future Sustainability, Legacy Openness and Vendor Independence..........................46
6.8
Environmental Constraints..........................................................................................46
6.9
Defining Service Level Agreements ...........................................................................47
7 DISASTER RECOVERY AND SERVICE CONTINUITY..............................................54
7.1
Introduction.................................................................................................................54
7.2
Threats and Risk Management and Risk Assessment.................................................54
7.3
Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan...............................................56
7.4
Project Design Criteria................................................................................................57
7.4.1
Back-up Facilities ...............................................................................................57
7.4.2
Power Supply Independence...............................................................................58
7.4.3
Network Redundancy..........................................................................................58
7.4.4
Countermeasures against Natural Disasters........................................................59
7.5
Enhancing the emergency response capacity..............................................................60
7.6
Disaster Information Systems .....................................................................................62
8 TELECOM SERVICE DELIVERY MODELS..................................................................64
8.1
Introduction.................................................................................................................64
8.2
EPU Profiles - Telecom Service Users .......................................................................64
8.2.1
Coordinating or Operating Bodies without Network Assets ..............................68
8.2.2
Transmission System Operator (TSO) or Transmission Utility .........................69
8.2.3
Distribution Utility..............................................................................................70
8.2.4
Generation Utility ...............................................................................................71
8.3
Telecom Asset Ownership Profiles.............................................................................73
8.3.1
Introduction.........................................................................................................73
8.3.2
Physical layer assets............................................................................................74
8.3.3
Transport network assets.....................................................................................77
8.3.4
Application service networks and platforms.......................................................77
8.4
Telecom Service Provider Relationship to the User ................................................78
8.4.1
Integrated to the Operational User (Type A) ......................................................79
8.4.2
Sister Entity to the Operational User (Type B)...................................................80
8.4.3
Affiliated Service Company (Type C)................................................................80
8.4.4
Independent Service Contractor (Type D)..........................................................81
8.4.5
External Telecom Service Provider (Type E).....................................................81
9 FEDERATING OF SERVICES ON THE PRIVATE INFRASTRUCTURE....................84
9.1
Introduction.................................................................................................................84
9.2
Process and Organization Issues.................................................................................85
9.3
Technical Solutions.....................................................................................................87
9.3.1
Fibre Separation in Optical Cables .....................................................................87
9.3.2
Wavelength Separation through C- or D-WDM.................................................88
9.3.3
Bandwidth Separation through PDH/SDH .........................................................89
9.3.4
Virtual Network Separation (MPLS VPN or Ethernet VLAN) ..........................89
10
MANAGEMENT OF TELECOM SERVICE AND INFRASTRUCTURE ..................91
10.1 Introduction - Need for a Management System..........................................................91
10.2 Present State Assessment and Target Definition ........................................................93
10.2.1
Telecom Business Maturity Modeling................................................................93

10.2.2
Management Process Maturity ...........................................................................94
10.3 Management Frameworks & Best Practices ...............................................................96
10.3.1
Introduction.........................................................................................................96
10.3.2
ITIL Framework..................................................................................................96
10.3.3
NGOSS Frameworx.........................................................................................97
10.3.4
Business Process Framework eTOM ..................................................................98
10.3.5
Relating ITIL to eTOM Framework ...................................................................99
10.4 Towards a Utility Telecom Management Framework ..............................................101
10.4.1
Introduction.......................................................................................................101
10.4.2
Utility Telecom Management Operations Map (uTOM)..................................102
10.5 Upstream Management .............................................................................................105
10.5.1
Introduction.......................................................................................................105
10.5.2
Policy Definition & Business Planning ............................................................107
10.5.3
Strategic Deployment and Tactical Adjustments..............................................109
10.5.4
Business Development, Service Offer and Service Migrations........................112
10.6 Operational Management..........................................................................................113
10.6.1
Customer/User Relation Management ..............................................................114
10.6.2
Communication Service Management Process.................................................115
10.6.3
Network Resource & Infrastructure Management ............................................117
10.6.4
Provider/Contractor Relationship Management Process ..................................120
10.6.5
Enterprise Processes impacting Telecom Service Delivery..............................121
10.7 Management Tools and Information Systems ..........................................................123
10.7.1
Introduction.......................................................................................................123
10.7.2
Element & Network Management Systems ......................................................124
10.7.3
Operation Support Systems (OSS)....................................................................125
10.7.4
Inventory & Configuration Data Base ..............................................................127
11
COST CONSIDERATIONS.........................................................................................131
12
FURTHER ACROSS THE HORIZON ........................................................................135
12.1 Power System Evolution - Smart Grid .....................................................................135
12.2 EPU Organization and Environment ........................................................................137
12.3 Communication Service Provider Environment .......................................................138
12.4 Telecom Technology Evolutions ..............................................................................139
12.5 Information System Evolution - Cloud Computing..................................................141
APPENDICES ..........................................................................................................................144
A1.
IP Voice in Utility Telecoms ........................................................................................144
A2.
Sharing Mobile Emergency Service (TETRA).............................................................149
A3.
Satellite Communications in Power Utilities................................................................151
A4.
Disaster Counter-measures Learning from US 2005 Hurricanes ..............................154
A5.
Survey of Electric Power Dimensioning Practice in EPU Data Centres ......................158
A6.
Deploying a Management Framework Western Power .............................................161
A7.
ITIL Management Framework......................................................................................165
A8.
TM Forum NGOSS - Frameworx.................................................................................173
A9.
List of Acronyms ..........................................................................................................182
REFERENCES .........................................................................................................................185

1 INTRODUCTION
Some 15 years ago, a technical brochure prepared by CIGRE Study Committee 35 started with
the following lines, summarizing the situation and the opportunities facing the power utilities
in terms of telecommunications as seen in early 1990s:
Over the last few years an increasing number of utilities have seen their telecommunication
activities being influenced by technological and operational change. The choices that utilities
are faced with today may have a significant impact on their future development.
Traditionally, power utilities have used telecommunications networks primarily for control and
operation of the power system. Standardized telecommunications equipment could not
always be used in an operational environment. Leasing telecommunication services, on the
other hand, was unacceptable in many cases because of low availability figures and service
level from the monopolized public operator or simply because the public
telecommunications network did not have sufficient geographic coverage to reach all the
utilitys substations.
The use of telecommunication network for other purposes was generally prohibited by
legislation. As a consequence, the planning of future network developments was relatively
straightforward. The networks were planned and designed to meet the utilities particular
operational needs and this decided the extent of investment in new network infrastructure. The
type of network infrastructure provided was also influenced by operational needs with
specialized equipment such as Power Line Carrier (PLC) being used extensively. Although
these criteria still play an important role in many networks today, the focus has now shifted to
cover a broader range of issues:

The requirement for increased capacity, speed and response time of the operational and
administrative services

The need to improve the efficiency of network maintenance and quality of service

The need to reduce dependence on vendor specific equipment

The opportunities provided by the liberalization of the telecommunications market

The opportunity to outsource all or parts of the telecommunications infrastructure or

service to third parties

(Extracted from TB107 Power System Communications in the High Speed Environment, [1])
In the 15 years that separate us from these lines, if the essential issues have not changed, the
situation is radically different.

The creation of electricity market has created new participants and hence the need for new
communication services. A new group of services has been formed that can be called
Business and Market communications. The requirement to communicate with the
electricity customers and with individual producers is driving important metering
infrastructure projects which may represent an opportunity to implement other utility or
commercial services.

The great majority of electrical power utilities have implemented extensive optical fibre
networks with SDH as the core technology providing the required capacity, speed and
response time of their operational requirements.

Technological orientations for a packet data communication layer are no longer a subject
of discussion. The omni-presence, the ubiquity and the strong industry support for the fully
mature Ethernet and IP technologies make them the natural complementary layer for
providing new services in the electrical utility. The multi-service capability of the IP
technology as discussed extensively in CIGRE Technical Brochure TB249 [2], allows the
creation of a single Integrated Service Network (ISN) to cover different operational,
operation support and corporate IP requirements, or multiple networks, each dedicated to
one of these families of Utility communications. At present, IP connection to the electrical
substation is a strong requirement for many new applications and has been the subject of a
Technical Brochure TB321 Operational Service using IP Virtual Private Networks [3]
and of further ongoing work. In order to carry these IP connections and other more timecritical communications, Utilities implement new Ethernet transport over SDH, over fibre,
or over an MPLS core. Wide Area Ethernet transport has been the subject of a separate
publication in CIGRE [4].

Many new directions in the mode of service delivery, which were to be explored at the
time, are today sufficiently evaluated, to allow a new analysis in the light of more than a
decade of experience. Many pioneers of seeking commercial revenue from the operational
network infrastructure have evolved into standard telecom Service Providers, moving
away from their original goal. Those who have maintained their original scope have
survived due to particular legal, legislative or practical contexts which are interesting to
explore.

New problems and operational issues have appeared due to outsourcing or due to the
provision of commercial services in the liberalized telecommunication market. A previous
CIGRE publication TB108 Business Opportunities for Utilities in the Telecom Market
[5] published in 1997 needs to be reviewed in the light of these new issues and problems.
The effects of commercial service on the operational service provision are to be analyzed.

Finally, moving from the monopolized Public Telecom Operator to many concurrent
Telecom Service Providers have changed radically the cost/performance and quality of
service objectives for the procured services. There has been a clear change of orientation
from a uniform quality objective towards a competitive, avoid non-contractual
performance to reduce cost strategy. The relationship between the Service User and the
Service Provider and the principle of Service Level Agreement between the two is of great
interest and needs to be covered.

At present, Electrical Power Utilities (EPU) are increasingly dependent upon the existence of
fast, secure and reliable communications services. These services interconnect the participants,
platforms and devices constituting the technical, commercial, and corporate processes of the
Utility across the different sites. The communication services are provisioned, managed and
maintained in different ways depending upon different quality constraints, cost and regulatory
imperatives and company policy considerations. The services can be integrated together into a

common network or provided through completely separate networks. The associated

telecommunication organization of the Utility varies correspondingly among power utilities.
Moreover, adopting a particular telecom service provisioning model is not an irrevocable
decision. It is often re-examined and reviewed in the light of new situations, some of which are
as follows:

New company policy and orientation,

Regulatory issues and requirements

Mergers and dislocation of activities,

Availability or loss of adequate telecom services to be procured,

Requirement for new services or change of scale in the existing services, incompatible
with the present provisioning model

Lack of satisfaction from the services obtained through the existing provisioning model,

Major capital investments and running costs required for refurbishment and extension of
existing facilities,

Technological changes in telecommunications and in power system technology

Lack of qualified staff and the ageing of the concerned technical work-force

This present document is not about telecommunication technology, which is extensively

covered in other CIGRE published literature and on-going work It focuses on the analysis and
provides a new look into the delivery of communication services associated with operational
applications of the EPU. It covers quality requirements, architectural aspects, as well as the
related organizational, and management issues across different types of EPU.
Management and maintenance of telecom network infrastructure and services are also covered
from a Utility process and organization point of view rather than from a technological view
which is again extensively covered in the literature and subject to very fast evolution.
This Technical Brochure is mainly addressed to:

EPU decision makers who assess telecommunication service provisioning strategies in

view of the changing nature and scale of requirements.

EPU Telecom service providing entities who need to adapt to those same changing
requirements

Telecom Service Provider offspring of EPUs who have over time forgotten the service
imperatives of their EPU operational customers

2 COMMUNICATION SERVICE IN THE POWER UTILITY

2.1

Introduction

The term service is widely used often with a very loose definition and may lead to confusion
and misunderstanding. We shall therefore start with some definitions that shall be used
throughout the document. These definitions are illustrated in figure 2.1.
Service is the perception of a User from a process implemented by a Provider.
A Service Provider deploys a telecom infrastructure and corresponding management
processes in order to offer Communication Services satisfying the requirements of its user
community. The user perceives the service as a network cloud providing communication
connectivity for its user applications and processes. ITU-T E800 defines the service as a set of
functions offered to the user by an organization [6].
A communication service is delivered at a Service Access Point with a certain Quality of
Service (QoS) as stipulated through a Service Level Agreement (SLA) between the Service
Provider and the Service User. A service level agreement can be formally stipulated or implicit
between the provider and the user.
The process of assuring that the terms of the SLA are met is called Service Management. It
relies upon a proper Infrastructure Management and Maintenance performed by the Service
Provider.
Service
Access
Point

User

Application
Platform

Service
Management

Infrastructure
Management &
Maintenance

Dedicated
Telecom
Infrastructure

Application
Platform

User

Procured Service

Communication
Service
User Application

Figure 2.1 Communication Service Model

A Public Telecom Operators mission is to provide telecom services to its customers. Telecom
service is in this case the end product and the final commodity for which the whole
organization is working. The Service User to Service Provider relationship is therefore
straightforward as shown in figure 2.2. The Telecom Operator designs and commercializes a
catalogue of standard telecom services based on a market survey and from thereon has no
particular concern regarding the customer applications employing these services other than
continually adapting the catalogue to the markets evolution.
8

An Electrical Power Utility (EPU), on the other side, provisions telecom services essentially
for its own requirements. The provision process may be multi-layer, employing dedicated
infrastructures or procured services at different levels and presenting multiple User-Provider
relationships as illustrated in figure 1. In this case, the catalogue of services must be based on
detailed analysis and characterization of EPU applications in terms of communication
requirements.
Process User

Service Platform &

Service Network

Service
User

User
Provider
User
Provider

Customers

Telecom Connectivity
User

Service
Provider

Public Telecom

Transmission Medium

Operator

Fibre Connectivity

Public Telecom
User / Provider
Relationship

Provider

Electrical Power Utility

User / Provider
Relationship

Figure 2.2 User-Provider Relationships

2.2

EPU Communication Services

Communication services in the EPU can be identified according to the applications that they
address. In particular, wherever the Service User entities and the telecom service providing
entity are tightly related, there is a one-to-one correspondence between applications and
communication service, resulting in an application-oriented definition of communication
services (e.g. SCADA or Protection communication services mean communication services
respecting the requirements of SCADA or Protection applications). The communication
Service Provider is assumed to be sufficiently familiar with the applications to apply the
necessary precautions in the delivery of the required service (i.e. implicit SLA). Whenever a
new application is introduced or the requirements of an application change, the user and
provider must seek a new common understanding of the service requirements.
On the other hand, where communication service is provided by an external or formally
separate entity, then the service provision contract (explicit SLA) defines the service attributes
according to the providers service catalogue (e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver, etc.). The Utility
user must then decide upon the suitable SLA for his applications.
In this report, we have identified communication services by the applications that they serve.
Consequently, we define communicating applications related to the operation of the power
system in chapters 3, 4 and 5, then the constraints and the required qualities in chapter 6,

before relating applications and constraints in section 6.9 (figures 6.6 and 6.7) allowing SLA
specification whichever provisioning scheme is adopted (as characterized in chapter 8).
The following application-oriented service categories can be identified:
1. Operational Services These communication services enable the coordination and
exchange of information between the staff, devices and platforms directly involved in
operational applications and processes used to operate, control and protect the power
system and its constituents. The processes are necessary for the proper accomplishment
of the Utilitys primary mission and therefore their communication services are referred
to as mission-critical.
2. Operation Support Services Closely related to the Power system Operation, there
exists increasingly a group of applications related to the maintenance and support of the
Power System infrastructure. This includes voice and data applications for the field
maintenance staff connecting them with central offices, servers and data sources
allowing them to perform their tasks, as well as remote monitoring and surveillance
applications. These are collectively referred to as Operation Support Applications and
their telecom requirements as Operation Support Communication Services.
3. Security, Safety and Environmental Services A whole group of new applications
related to the security of utility staff, public safety, Utility site security, and
environmental security is emerging in many countries due to growing security and
environmental concerns and consequent regulatory constraints. These applications
which were previously considered as part of the operation support are increasingly
considered as a distinct class of applications with extensive communication
requirements and constraints.
4. Corporate Communication Services These communication services are related to
the administrative applications of the Power Utility as a Corporate Enterprise, covering
the administration and corporate needs of the Utility organization and its employees
(including those located in Operational sites).
5. Business and Market Communication Services The Power Utility needs to
exchange information with its external Market partners and its power customers. This
includes communications between power generators, distribution companies, national
and other country TSO, trading platforms and energy consumers. The required
communication services are referred to as Business and Market Communication
Services. Smart metering and Demand-side Management communications are part of
this class of communication services.
6. Commercial or U-Telco Communication Services The Power Utility or an
affiliated entity may provide commercial communication services as a source of
revenue to other Utilities, to institutional customers (e.g. government or community
offices), to telecom Service Providers, or to multi-site companies (and in certain cases
to individual customers). The service may cover subscriber premises access (DSL),
core communications, or both. Providing U-Telco communication services can be
assimilated to the service provision model of a public telecom operator.
Criticality of communication services in the Power Utility can be assessed through the
consequences of service loss and degradation. It is clear that a high degree of criticality can be

10

attributed to the operational services. However, it should be noted that the operational
applications are not the only critical processes in the Power Utility. Security and human safety
related applications present also a high level of criticality. The same can be said about
communications related to Utility Business and Market activities where the financial
consequences of a loss of communication can be tremendous. Corporate communications may
be tolerant to longer periods of programmed unavailability, in particular for maintenance
purposes. The loss of commercial communications has the same degree of criticality as that of
other public telecom operators resulting immediately in a loss of revenues, the non-respect of
contractual obligations if prolonged, and in the long run in a loss of customers.
The performance objectives and the Quality of Service are also different among these different
service types. Many operational services, such as Protection Relay applications, have
extremely severe time delay and communication integrity constraints, whereas the other
communication service types are mainly transactional with less severe time sensitivity. On the
other hand, business and market communication services implicate access beyond the
perimeter of the power company and may raise more severe security issues.
The first three groups of services described above may collectively be called operationrelated services (serving operation-related EPU applications). The present brochure focuses
on these services even if other services are often mentioned, in particular when their provision
interferes with (or influences) the way in which operation-related services are provisioned.

Electrical Power Utility

Telecommunications
Operations-Related
Communications
Enterprise Network
IT-oriented

Administrative/Corporate
Communication Services

Operational
Communication Services

Business / Market
Security transactions
internet-oriented
Communication Services

Operation Support
Communication Services
Security & Safety

Service-Provider
oriented

Commercial / U-Telco
Communication Services

Communication Services
Industrial
Communications

Figure 2.3 Power Utility Telecommunications

Considering the organizational diversity of EPUs and their different sizes, activities, and
regulatory constraints, the exact perimeter of each category and the allocation of individual

11

EPU applications to these categories can vary to some extent and may evolve with
organizational changes. Some of the factors that influence these allocations are as follows:

Security policy The definition of separate security domains in the EPU and the
consequent allocation of applications to these different security domains can result in the
communication service allocation. This means that the applications which are part of a
same security domain shall exclusively use a same group of communication services.
Organization The organizational entity in charge of a group of applications may require
exclusive usage of a service or a same group of communication services.
Company strategy Grouping of communication services may depend upon the
companys strategy, for example to merge corporate and operation-related IT and
telecoms, or to merge corporate and market related applications communications
provision, etc.
Regulatory issues Regulation authorities may prevent operational applications to share
communication services with non-operational, or may impose full separation of the UTelco activities.

The grouping of different applications communication services strongly impacts the service
integration strategy of the company as described in Chapter 9 on Federating of Services.

12

3 OPERATIONAL APPLICATIONS
3.1 Protection Communication
Power system faults disrupt normal power flow by diverting current through a short-circuited
connection and collapsing power system voltage. Power system fault clearing requirements are
very important design and operational criteria for power systems.

Faults can cause damage and breakdown to power apparatus such as circuit breakers,
transformers and cables. The repair work or full replacement in case of destruction is very
costly and may take considerable time.

Faults can also cause severe operational disturbances resulting in collapse of power
delivery and blackout for regions, and, in severe cases, even for several countries. Heavy
reliance of modern society on electric power consuming devices for business activities,
safety, lighting, heating, communication and many other conveniences make severe
disturbances and blackouts unacceptable.

Transients due to faults in the power system can also adversely affect sources of
generation and customer loads.

Faults can have also legal and financial consequences.

o Manufacturer can be responsible for the consequences in case of a faulty device
(e.g. a breaker not acting correctly) Fault recorders can be used for this purpose
o Customers may have to be paid for the Customer lost minutes and company
can get a penalty from the Regulation Authority

Consequently, faults must be detected and isolated very quickly. Electric power system
generators, transformers, Busbars, and power lines are monitored by Protective Relays
designed to detect faults and operate isolating devices designed to interrupt damaging fault
current.
Protection performance requirements specify the balance between the conflicting goals of
dependability and security:

Dependability goals require maximum sensitivity and fast response time to detect and
clear all faults quickly with very low probability of a failure to trip.

Security goals require maximum selectivity and slow response time to minimize the
probability of spurious operation leading to an unwanted trip on a faultless circuit. Security
is an issue during fault conditions as well as during normal, faultless conditions.

Therefore, the implementation of a Protection scheme should result in dependable operation of

only those relays protecting the faulted unit, and secure non-operation of the relays during nonfault conditions and when faults occur on adjacent power system units. This balance is met
only through proper protection scheme design, proper relay and equipment selection, and
proper connection and setting of these relays and equipment to achieve appropriate sensitivity
and coordination.

13

When protection schemes detect a fault on the equipment or line they protect, they signal (or
trip) isolating devices, called circuit breakers, to open, in order to isolate the faulty segment
of the system and restore normal voltage and current flow in the power system.
When the protection scheme and circuit breakers operate properly, the fault is isolated within
the required fault-clearing time. Protection applied on extremely high voltage systems, where
fault-clearing times are most critical, typically detect faults and operate in about one to two
cycles (or even less than one cycle in certain cases). Circuit breakers operate in one to three
cycles. The combination of high-speed protection schemes and fast circuit breakers can
interrupt a fault in about two cycles, although more common fault-clearing times range from
three to six cycles.
Many protection applications require the real time transfer of electrical measurements, signals
and commands between electrical substations to enhance or to enable the trip/operate decision.

Protection systems for substation units (generators, busbars, transformers, etc.) can
normally meet the fault clearing requirements without using telecommunication. Telecom
services may be needed in this case, only to command a circuit breaker at a remote end if a
local circuit breaker has been economized (Direct tripping) or exists but fails to interrupt
fault-currents (Breaker Failure).

Protection schemes for HV lines generally need to exchange information with the
protection device at the far end of the line to meet fault clearing requirements.
Communication between the protection devices may be the basis for fault detection as in
the case of a Current Differential Protection, or needed to ensure that time response and
selectivity requirements are met, as in Permissive Distance Protections.

The Teleprotection function is part of the Protection system that adapts the signals and
measurements from the Protection to the telecommunication channel. It may be integrated into
the protective device, or the telecommunication access equipment, or it may constitute a standalone device.
If telecommunication fails, backup protection schemes still ensure that power system faults
will be cleared, but they may not be cleared within specified time requirements. Then the
probability of uncontrollable power swings and partial or complete system blackout increases
significantly.
Protection communications between substations are at present carried through transparent
dedicated telecom circuits ranging from analogue (e.g. PLC), to a sub-E1 or E1 circuits
multiplexed into an SDH transmission system, a dedicated wavelength or a dedicated fibre.
The communication requirements of different protection schemes have been described in detail
in [7]. Their evolutions, in particular their interfacing and transport over an Ethernet
connection, are currently being assessed in CIGRE JWG D2/B5-30 and shall be the subject of
a separate Technical Brochure.
Building additional generating stations or transmission lines is generally the other alternative to
reduce the probability of fault-induced blackouts but is significantly more costly than
reinforced protection schemes with adequate telecommunication services. This is the reason
why Protection Relaying applications can, on their own, justify the implementation of

14

dedicated telecommunication infrastructures with particularly severe constraints in terms of the

quality of communication service.

3.1.1 State Comparison Protection Schemes (Command Schemes)

State comparison protection schemes use communication channels to share logical status
information between protective relay schemes located at each end of a transmission line. This
shared information permits high speed tripping for faults occurring on 100 percent of the
protected line.
The logical status information shared between the relay terminals typically relates to the
direction of the fault, so the information content is very basic and generally translates into a
command, requiring very little communication bandwidth. Additional information such as
transfer tripping of a remote breaker (to isolate a failed breaker) and recloser blocking may
also be sent to provide additional control.
Even if the communication requirements for state comparison protection schemes are
considerably less stringent than for Analog Comparison Protection schemes (described in the
next section), the command transmission time is of great importance because the purpose for
using communication is to improve the tripping speed of the scheme. Also, variations in
transmission time are better tolerated in state comparison schemes than in the Analog
Comparison protection schemes.
Communication channel security is essential to avoid false signals that could cause incorrect
tripping, and communication channel dependability is important to ensure that the proper
signals are communicated during power system faults, the most critical time during which the
protection schemes must perform their tasks flawlessly.
Comparing the direction to the fault at one terminal with the direction to the fault at the other
terminal permits each relay scheme to determine if the fault is within the protected line
section, requiring the scheme to trip, or external to the protected line section, requiring the
scheme to block tripping.
If it were possible to set relays to see all faults on their protected line section, and to ignore
faults outside of their protected line section, then there would be no need for communication
schemes to assist the relays. However, protection relays cannot be set to see faults only
within a precise electrical distance from their line terminal. They are imprecise because of
many factors, including voltage and current transformer errors, relay operating tolerance, line
impedance measurement errors and calculation tolerance, and source impedance variations.
The primary relay elements used to detect line faults are therefore set to see or reach either
short of the remote line terminal (this is called under reaching), or to see or reach past the
remote line terminal (this is called over reaching).
Communication for state comparison protection schemes must therefore be designed to
provide safe, reliable, secure, and fast information transfer from one relay scheme to another.
The communication scheme must also be able to transmit information in both directions at the
same time. The amount of information required to transfer between relay schemes depends on
the relay scheme logic.

15

The terminology used to describe these state comparison protection schemes is basically
defined according to the impedance zone monitored by the protection relay as presented
below.
CIGRE Terminology

Alternate Name

Intertripping Underreach Distance Protection

Direct Underreach Transfer Tripping (DUTT)

Permissive Underreach Distance Protection

Permissive Underreach Transfer Tripping (PUTT)

Permissive Overreach Distance Protection

Permissive Overreach Transfer Tripping (POTT)

Accelerated Underreach Distance Protection

Zone Acceleration

Deblocking (or Blocking) Overreach Distance

Protection

Directional Comparison Unblocking (or Blocking)

Figure 3.1 - State Comparison Protection Schemes [7]

3.1.2 Teleprotection Signalling Systems

Teleprotection signaling is the function of transforming the state information transmitted by the
Protection Relay (e.g. a Binary Command) into a signal suitable for transmission over a
telecommunication channel and to restitute the information to the remote Protection Relay or
remote Circuit Breaker in a secure and prompt manner. Teleprotection signaling is associated
to the communication of State Comparison Protection schemes and all direct tripping
applications. The telecommunication channel is typically an analog circuit over PLC, or a
digital sub-E1 or E1 over a multiplexed digital communication system or a dedicated fibre (or
wavelength).
The operational performance of a Teleprotection signaling system can be defined through the
following parameters:
Security is the ability to prevent communication service anomalies from restituting a
Command at the remote end when no command has been issued. Security is expressed as
the Probability Pucof unwanted commands (command condition set at the receiving end
for a time duration longer than a specified limit). Security is related to the communication
service integrity (error performance) and the Teleprotection Signaling systems error
detection capability.

Transmission time is the maximum time (Tac ) for the delivery of the command at the
remote end, after which it is considered as having failed to be delivered. This is a
constraint to the time performance of the communication service, not only in terms of
nominal value but as a guaranteed limit.

Dependability is the ability to deliver all issued commands at all times without any
statistical considerations. It is expressed as the Probability Pmcof missing commands
(issued commands not arriving to the remote device, arriving too late or with a time
duration shorter than a specified limit). This sets a very severe constraint on the
availability and error performance of the communication service, challenging such telecom
service concepts as errored seconds and degraded minutes being counted in the
available time of a communication service.

16

3.1.3 Analog Comparison Protection Schemes

Analogue Comparison Protection is based on the transmission and comparison of electrical
parameters between the ends of a protected line. The analogue values that are compared
across the line are, in particular, current samples although other schemes (e.g. Phase
Comparison) also exist.
Current Differential Protection (longitudinal current differential) is applicable to any
overhead line or underground cable at all voltage levels and is used in particular for:

Very short lines and cables where the low impedance makes the adjustment of settings
difficult for the use of Distance Relay

Multi-terminal lines where the intermediate in-feeds modify the impedance seen by the
Distance Relays, implicating that the observed impedance is not only dependent on the
distance to the fault, but also on the in-feed from the remote terminals, making impossible
an accurate measure of the impedance.

Situations where only current transformers are installed at each end of the line (no voltage
transformers)

EHV transmission lines where series capacitors may create protection issues.

The transfer of analog samples between the ends of the protected line can be performed in
several ways, the most common, at present, being the use of digital communications. The
instantaneous current values at each end of the power line are sampled, converted to digital
data and transmitted towards the other terminals with a sample rate ranging from 12 to 60
samples per cycle. Although the communication interface is generally a standard ITU-T (or
EIA) interface, it should be noted that the time, integrity and availability constraints for these
services are far from the standard telecommunication practice. Direct optical fibre connection
between protection terminals or wavelength multiplexing of the optical protection signal can
also be used with an enhanced reliability where dedicated fibre or wavelength is available.
Current differential Protections are particularly time-sensitive as their operation is based upon
the comparison of current samples collected from a remote point with those measured locally
at the same instant of time in order to detect a fault. An error in sample timing and the delay
compensation mechanism, results in a differential current that increases the risk of unwanted
tripping.
Modern systems provide a global time stamping of samples through GPS-synchronization.
However, the older generation relays, still largely deployed, use the total round-trip transfer
time to calibrate the time difference between local and remote current samples, assuming that
the go and return times are strictly equal. This creates a great sensitivity of the system to any
time difference and therefore implicates the same routing for the two senses of
communication.
This is a strong constraint on the operation of the communication network and the mode of
resilience employed for the communication channel.

3.1.4 System-wide Protection Schemes

System-wide Protection operates in a wider area than that for power line protections. It consists
of measuring units at different locations across the power system, which sample in a
17

synchronized manner different vector measurement of voltage values (Synchronized Phasors or

Synchrophasors) transmitting the information to a central equipment which takes protection
decisions (Wide Area Protection & Control System, WAP&C). It should be noted, however,
that not all system-wide protection systems are based on synchrophasor measurements.
System-wide Protection can be used to implement an Adaptive Protection Scheme: a
protection philosophy which permits and seeks to make adjustments automatically in various
protection functions in order to make them more attuned to prevailing system conditions.
System-wide Protection can also be used to prevent power system disturbance such as
overload, power swing and abnormal frequency or voltage. These schemes are called System
Integrity Protection Schemes (SIPS), also known as Remedial Action Schemes (RAS) or
Special Protection Systems (SPS). They consist of automated systems that protect the grid
against system emergencies, minimizing the potential and extent of wide outages through
automatic measures such as load shedding, generator shedding or system separation.
The telecommunication requirements for these system-wide protection schemes are similar to
those for Current Differential Protections described above, but moving large volumes of
information across a whole sub-network rather than between the adjacent nodes at the ends of
a transmission line. This implicates time-constrained and fully predictable wide area network
services. The required overall operating time is less than a few hundreds of milliseconds
where the protection system transmission time should be less than several tens of milliseconds,
and the propagation delay across the telecommunication system at most several milliseconds.

3.2 Energy Management, SCADA and WAMS Communications

Energy Management covers all functions necessary to monitor and control the operation of the
power network. Control Centres need to exchange information with generating stations,
substations, other Control Centres, other Utilities, power pools and non-Utility generators. The
information to be exchanged comprises real time and historical power system monitoring data
including control, scheduling and accounting data.
The reliability of the electricity supply depends ultimately on the security and reliability of the
Energy Management System and its ability to exchange information. The Control Centre and
its communications need therefore to be highly secure and reliable.
The power system architecture and its operational organization often include different
hierarchical levels of Control Centres as well as geographically distinct Back-up facilities and
Remote Operator positions implicating inter-Control Centre and remote workstation
communications.

3.2.1 SCADA Communications

SCADA communication consists in the periodic exchange of short data messages between a
central platform in the Control Centre and the Remote Terminal Units (RTU) in the electrical
substations. The messages comprise status indications, measurements, commands, set-points
and synchronizing signals that must be transmitted in real-time and requiring high data
integrity, accuracy, and short transfer time.

18

Power transmission and distribution networks SCADA generally differ in their requirements,
cost objectives and hence suitable communication solutions. The number of outstations and
their corresponding size, cost, volume of traffic, and geographical dispersion are very different
in the national transmission grid and in regional distribution networks. The time constraints
and the required level of availability, fault tolerance and data integrity are also different. As a
consequence, transmission grid SCADA communication is often implemented through a
broadband private network with point-to-point or multi-point with a small number of RTUs
(typically 2 or 3) per circuit, while in distribution networks (in particular for the MV level)
lower capacity solutions such as UHF Multiple Address Radio systems (MARS), spreadspectrum licence-free radio systems or procured services (GPRS, VSAT, etc.) prevail.
Still today, the widest employed communication mode for the substation RTU remains the
Asynchronous Serial link through an RS232 interface, polled by the central control platform.
The communication protocol associated to this mode has been standardized as IEC 60870-5101 (IEC101), although many other protocols are still in use in legacy systems. The great
advantage of Serial link SCADA is its conceptual simplicity. The major drawback to serial
communication for SCADA is indeed its lack of flexibility (e.g. for back-up control centre
connection) and cumbersome installation in particular at the Control Centre.
Packet switching has been applied to SCADA services since the late 80s, essentially to save
leased aggregated bandwidth on Control Centre links and to enhance system flexibility and
resilience. SCADA networks have been implemented over X25 packet switching, Frame Relay
systems and ATM in certain countries. However, worldwide popularity of SCADA
communications over packet networks has been due to IP communications.
SCADA RTU communications are migrating to TCP/IP based protocol IEC 60870-5-104,
generally called IEC104. The RTU communicates through an Ethernet LAN access interface at
10 or 100Mbps, although the bandwidth allocated to each RTU communication remains often
around 10kbps. Legacy RTU may be connected through a Terminal Server encapsulating Serial
data.
The use of TCP/IP enhances considerably the flexibility of the SCADA communication
system, facilitating the relocation of an RTU or the switch-over of RTU communications to a
back-up facility.
The migration process for large legacy SCADA networks from existing serial communications
to TCP/IP is a major concern in many Utilities. This process may be extended over many
years, and does not necessarily cover at the same time the replacement of the RTU, its
communication interface, the telecommunication network and the Control Centre Front-end
facilities. Moreover, new RTUs dispersed across the network may be TCP/IP while the existing
may remain serial linked, up to their programmed end-of-life.

3.2.2 Inter-Control Centre Communications

Communications between Control Centres is necessary for connection to back-up facilities
(e.g. for database synchronization), to other Control Centres (e.g. for dispatch coordination), or
to other platforms (e.g. for market management applications). The primary purpose of the
Inter-Control Centre Communications is to transfer data between control systems and to
initiate control actions.

19

These communications are assured through the Inter-Control Centre Protocol (ICCP)
standardized as IEC 60870-6 and Telecontrol Application Service Element (TASE-2) protocol,
although earlier protocols may still be in use in certain older systems.
ICCP uses an underlying transport-service, normally TCP/IP over Ethernet. The required
bandwidth for an ICCP link is generally around 2Mbps (E1) which can be provisioned over an
SDH network, although lower capacity links (64-128 kbps or even lower) have been used
where no fibre and SDH capacity is available.
The time constraint for an ICCP connection is of the order of hundreds of milliseconds which
rarely constitute a constraint in an IP/Ethernet network over a digital communication
infrastructure.
Security is the fundamental issue in implementing ICCP connections. An inadequately
protected ICCP connection may form an open door to the control of the nation-wide energy
network.

3.2.3 Remote Control Centre Operator Consoles

Remote connection of Operator positions to the Control Centre platform also requires high
speed communications. An Ethernet connection with a throughput of 2-10Mbps generally
allows an adequate quality communication link for connecting these remote workstations.

3.2.4 Generation Control Signaling

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) are signals that the Control Centre sends to the different
generation plants in order to maintain the frequency and tie line flow and to increase or reduce
their power production accordingly.
Generation Control signals are either through fast regulation loop (1- 5 seconds) or slower
step-up and step-down signals transmitted from the Control Centre to Generation
Plants/Units through dedicated communication channels (or TCP/IP). Their availability and
security is therefore essential to the proper operation of the power system.

3.2.5 Wide Area Monitoring System (PMU Communications)

Wide Area Measurement and Monitoring provides a GPS-synchronized snap-shot of the power
system through the acquisition of complex parameters (amplitude and phase) across the power
network. It enables a better visibility of power flow across the system incorporating dispersed
generation and multiple Utilities. The collected complex parameters are Bus voltages, line
currents, etc. The Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is the acquisition device in the HV
substation, collecting time-tagged phasors.
Measurements are transmitted to a central platform generally through a Phasor Data
Concentrator (PDC) for different applications. These different levels of wide area applications
have very different requirements in terms of information exchange and consequently
telecommunication service [8].

Post-incident analysis and static modelling applications are offline systems where
collected data is used to analyze the cause of an event or to adjust the behaviour model for
a system. Data can be collected continuously, daily or only on request. The communication
service can be a TCP/IP file transfer service with no real time constraint.

20

Visualization and Situational Awareness applications collect data from sites and display
them for human operator observation. These applications which constitute the great
majority of present day systems have time requirements which are those of a human
operator and must additionally present a level of sample loss unperceivable by the human
operator. In terms of communication service a non-acknowledge UDP/IP is an adequate
solution in this case whether through a dedicated network or a public provider.

Monitoring & Decision Support systems use collected data to produce analytical
information helping operators respond to grid events and to position the grid for improved
security and resilience. Stability diagrams and corresponding voltage collapse margins, as
well as different monitoring applications (Voltage & Frequency stability, Power
Oscillations, Line Temperature, etc.) are among these applications. Monitoring and
decision support applications have time constraints which are similar to power system
SCADA. This is achievable through UDP over a private IP network or a Service Provider
VPN through a carefully specified SLA.

Closed Loop Applications are those which incorporate collecting of data from the grid,
processing, automatic recognition of a pattern, and remedial action upon the grid. The
systems are used for emergency situation control and special protection applications as
described earlier in section 3.1.4. Closed loop synchrophasor applications are not yet
widely implemented and their critical real-time nature necessitates particular attention on
time control. Furthermore the decision to act automatically upon the network in real-time
means that the data set (from different locations and sample stack from each point) must
be complete, that is to say almost lossless. Providing lossless data across a telecom
network generally implies error recovery which is constrained by time limitations.

PMU operation is specified by IEEE C37.118 which defines phasor construction using the
GPS-satellite timing signal, as well as the phasors data format. The exact data volume
associated with the transmission of a data packet from a PMU varies depending on the
incorporated parameters and the way each of them is coded (i.e. floating point or not, etc.) but
can be assumed to be around 80 100 octets. This data volume is to be transferred across the
network at a rate which is governed by the sampling frequency of the PMU. The sampling
frequency is expressed as a number of (or a fraction of) AC cycles. It is often 25 (or 30)
samples per second corresponding to one sample every two cycles to 100-120 samples per
second corresponding to two samples every cycle (Nyquist Rate). This latter rate allows the
processing of the signal corresponding to the AC fundamental wave.
The required communication throughput is then somewhere in the range of 16 100 kbps for a
50Hz power system although PDC links may require few hundred kbps upto 1Mbps or more.

21

Different types of application

Operation
time

Latency

Data
Availability

Telecom
Service

Wide-area Visibility and Situational Awareness

Display of voltage, phase power swing and line loading
Help operator understand what is happening in RT
in a region or for a grid asset

Human
operator
Minutes

seconds

Sample loss
not
perceivable

UDP/IP on
dedicated
network or
public provider

Decision support systems and Security assessment

minutes
Analytical data helping operators respond to grid events or below
Repositioning the grid for improved security
Stability diagrams and voltage collapse margins
Monitoring of Voltage & Frequency stability, Power
Oscillations, Line Temperature

seconds

Sample
loss
tolerated

UDP over
private IP
network or
VPN with
well specified
SLA

System-level and grid asset models (static & dynamic)

e.g. Power plant models

Off-line
minutes

N/A

Non-critical

TCP/IP File
Transfer

Closed Loop Applications

Emergency Situation Control and Protection Functions
Remedial Action (RAS) and Special Protection Systems

seconds
or below

10-100ms

Very
Critical

Ethernet
VLAN with
fast recovery

Figure 3.2 Wide Area Applications communication service requirements [mes]

3.3 Remote Substation Control and Automation

The HV substation is evolving into a networked environment around Ethernet (IEC61850)
which will rapidly become the main interfacing technology for all data exchange applications
in the electrical power substation. Even if the interactions in the automation and control of the
substation are at present local, the connection of the substation automation platform to other
substations and/or to remote monitoring and control platforms is rapidly becoming a
requirement. Many Digital Substation Control (DCS) platforms employ Scada RTU-type
communication protocols such as IEC104 for data exchange with the EMS/SCADA
environment.

3.4 Operational Telephone System

Highly reliable and secure voice communications are required for load dispatching and for
network switching operations. At control centres, generating stations and switching
substations, voice facilities are needed to allow operational staff to communicate quickly and
efficiently. At times of disturbance on the system, the need for operational staff to
communicate can be urgent. Normally, a private, highly secure operational telephone system is
needed to provide the required facilities.
The voice facilities for operational use include:

Direct (hotline) telephone lines from the Control Centre to all major operational sites
control rooms
Switched telephone service through PBX and a closed numbering scheme
Additional redundancy and operation in situations of site isolation.
Interconnection with the public telephone network.
Voice and data traffic.
Mobile radio voice facilities for access to operational staff who visit facilities. (Mobile
workforce communications is treated in a separate section).

22

The Operational telephone service is today evolving into IP telephony and becomes
increasingly an Ethernet transported data service with particular time and bandwidth
requirements.
Some of the specific features of operational voice service are as follows:

Access restriction Use of the operational voice service is confined to operational staff
and not accessible to unauthorized users.
High availability Voice service access for the operational staff and in particular the
access of the Control Centre to the network substations and generating plants is essential
and must present a very high availability through adequate route resilience and equipment
duplication.
Resilience/fault tolerance The voice service must remain available even in the event of
network faults, node failure and route unavailability. In particular, a star-structured
network in which the failure of a single node may jeopardize the system is not acceptable.
Multiple homing (at least dual homing) of secondary sites and a mesh interconnection of
the main nodes is generally required to achieve the required level of fault tolerance.
Transfer to Backup Control Centre In emergency situations leading to the migration of
power system control to a Back-up Control Centre, the telephone network must rapidly
adapt in order to transfer the telephone calls for the Control staff to the Back-up facility.
This transfer must be possible even if the communication equipment in the main control
centre is no longer operational (e.g. fire, flood or power breakdown).
Very rapid call connection The call establishment time must be in line with the
operational emergency situations in which the voice communication may become
necessary. In particular, the structure of the telephone network (number of cascaded
transits) and the employed signaling scheme may greatly influence the call connection
speed.
Priority functions These functions allow critical communications to be established even
when all voice network resources are occupied. This can be performed through Forced
Releasing of facilities which are used by less critical communications, or by reserving the
usage of certain facilities (e.g. communication channels) for priority calls only. Similarly,
critical calls can Beak-in into an established communication of a busy called party.
Priority status can be attributed permanently to a given user line (i.e. Control Operator), or
obtained dynamically through a code for a given communication.
Caller identification and Call Queuing Control centre operators need to identify
automatically the source of incoming calls and to establish queues of in progress
communications in order to interact with many sites, in particular at times of power system
emergencies. In progress and queuing calls must be accessible and transferable between
different Control centre operator positions.
Mobile voice Control centre facilities and large power plants telephone systems must
have the capability to connect mobile voice terminals to fixed telephone extensions.
Depending on the implemented mobile radio network, these connections may require the
existence of PTT (Push to Talk) facilities and associated conversion of Half-Duplex to
Full-Duplex voice communications.
Ability to pre-select conference calls The voice system must present the capability to
establish pre-configured conference calls, in particular between operational staff in the
control centre, in multiple substations and maintenance staff.

23

Call Recording Control centre voice facilities include voice recorders which constantly
record all communications of the operators which will be archived periodically. These call
recordings are essential in order to establish the sequence of events and instructions given
by the Control Operators in emergency situations.
Appendix 1 presents some examples of IP telephony usage in Utility Operational Voice
systems.

3.5 Settlement and Revenue Metering and Customer

Communications
Energy metering is the exchange of time integrated Energy Data at a commercial interface or
boundary used for energy charging and billing.

3.5.1 Energy Metering in the Deregulated Environment

The opening of the electricity market and exchanges between countries together with the
consequent introduction of new players and roles in the power delivery system modifies the
requirements regarding the metering information. The transmission grid operator performs
energy metering at the HV grid access point in order to feed appropriate information with an
adequate level of confidentiality to the different market participants and to enable settlement
and reconciliation processes as well as invoicing of its transmission services towards the
distributors.
Metering data may be used for the following purposes at the Transmission Operator side:
Invoice the grid access service,
Calculate and invoice (or pay) imbalances,
Calculate the compensation for losses on the network,
Pay for system services (frequency, voltage),
Check and pay offers on the Balancing Mechanism
At the customer side (Distributors, Industrial Customers, Generators):
Sell or buy energy on the market
Check and control the load curves (comparison with the supplier invoice),
Optimize the access contract,
Control the process in real time by direct access or through remote reading
Make offers on the Balancing Market.
Customers with several plants connected to the network require completed metering data for
each of their plants in order to get the global load profile. The data from distribution
substations are used for the calculation of Distribution System Operator (DSO) losses, to set up
the national load curve, and to calculate imbalances acting on the DSO network (spatial
alignment and temporal reconciliation).
Metering is also used by the Balance Responsible Entity in order to maintain balance on its
perimeter and to check the imbalances [9].

3.5.2 Customer Metering, Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Customer-related communications and revenue metering are not operational applications but
represent enormous potential for telecommunication services in the power utility. They can

24

enable, in certain cases, other operational and monitoring applications in particular in the
distribution network where the number of communication nodes is extremely high and the cost
that can be attributed to the access for each node is very small. Distribution SCADA for the
secondary network (e.g. 33/11 kV) and monitoring of MV transformers are typical examples of
operational applications profiting from the deployment of advanced metering infrastructures.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) which covers the overall system composed of
consumer data acquisition and collection as well as bidirectional communication with the
electricity provider, is a further step from simple remote reading of customer meters. Several
AMI projects in different countries are assessing new technologies for dedicated network
coverage beyond the EPU sites perimeter (MV/LV PLC, meshed networking of packet radio
systems, etc.) and some telecom/internet operators are working towards new service offers to
occupy this promising market segment.

3.5.3 Advanced distribution applications and Smart Grid

Many new applications allowing better coordination of the end energy consumer and the
dispersed generation of electrical power with the overall power delivery system, under the
banner of Smart Grid, require bidirectional communications between the centrally located
control platform and dispersed consumer/producer premises. These applications which include
demand response, selective load curtailment and dynamic and negotiated control of consumer
power limitations must be served in terms of communications with a variety of telecom
services whose requirements vary considerably according to the envisaged scenarios, with
different impacts on the telecom service delivery mode of the EPU. These are further discussed
under Chapter 12 Further across the Horizon.

25

4 OPERATION SUPPORT APPLICATIONS

4.1 Collaborative Multi-media Communications
Site working process in the Power Utility is changing with the new information system and IT
practices. For the execution of their site duties, site personnel and the intervening staff require
expert support, remote diagnostics and reporting facilities. The following constitute some of
the required services:

Networked office applications (e.g. mail and calendar systems, file transfer, remote
database access, intranet),

Work-order and ERP solutions (e.g. project control and time registration),

Collaborative voice service, often called switched or PBX voice (increasingly

evolving into an IP-data service as a consequence of switch technology change, network
change and also in the objective of cost reduction and new features),

Video conferencing facilities and electronic white-board in branch offices and control
centres and PC-based video-streaming in the dispersed sites.

These applications require the secure extension of the corporate enterprise applications from
the branch office to the operational sites, while remaining fully isolated from the operational
applications. IT-support may be effectively administered from a corporate central site.

4.2 On-line Documentation

Documentation is an essential base for efficient management of utility infrastructure.
Previously, the site support staff found all necessary information to carry out their tasks at the
substation either in the documentation residing at site (equipment maintenance manuals and
schedules, drawings, etc.) or in their briefcase. Increasingly, an extensive amount of support
information for the field intervention staff is available in centralized servers that can be
accessed on-line when required.
Pictures and video add particularly useful information in the dispersed environment of the
power delivery system. These applications require a broadband network in order to meet an
acceptable time performance. The introduction of inexpensive GPS equipment and commercial
mapping applications makes Geographical Information Systems (GIS) an important tool for
field based maintenance personnel. Connecting to maintenance applications in the substations
and downloading accurate maps, pictures and work orders may effectively economize time.
However, the use of GIS and increasingly automation of data acquisition of power line
infrastructure (e.g. laser scanning) lead to heavily growing data volumes and need for scalable
ICT infrastructure.
On-line documentation is a well identified requirement and an existing facility in certain
Utilities.
The use of networking is to be coordinated through the Security policy of the Power Utility.

26

4.3 Substation Automation Platform Management

The monitoring and configuration management of the different components of the substation
automation system (protection relays, feeder bay controllers, etc.) is still often performed
locally in the substation and through the substation controller. It can be assumed that networkwide communications shall be required to perform platform management tasks remotely either
through native TCP/IP or through encapsulation and terminal servers. In this case, a TCP/IP
traffic flow resulting from the supervision data relating to the operational performance, health
and condition of the SAS, as well as File transfers due to configuration data and parameter
settings can be assumed.

4.4 Condition and Quality Monitoring Communications

Primary assets of the power system (circuit breaker, power transformer, etc.) generate
condition monitoring data through their associated electronic intelligence which needs to be
collected for maintenance requirements, and for determining duty cycle, capability and loading
ability. Asset condition monitoring enables the safe and efficient use of network components to
their real end of life, at full efficiency, without disruption of service due to asset failure,
environmental risks, or unnecessary preventive replacement.
Secondary assets of the electrical substation related to the measurement, protection and control
as well as their respective power supply (including that of the telecom equipment) also need to
be monitored through a remote platform.
Condition monitoring in the substation generates a large volume of non-real time data to be
transferred continuously to one or multiple remote platforms, hence creating the necessity for a
monitoring network across the telecommunication infrastructure. The associated architecture
is indeed utility-dependent but can be implemented conveniently through web-service, with
servers residing in the substation or at some other location.
Environment monitoring applications in the power system are performed for two different
purposes:

Protect substation assets and premises (temperature monitoring, substation fire detection,
etc.)

Protect the environment from industrial risks and hazards related to the substation assets,
e.g. chemical pollution detection, etc. These are part of the security and safety applications
as described in section 5.1.3.

Energy Quality Monitoring applications transfer data related to electrical power parameters at
commercial interfaces or boundaries where energy is transferred between different power
actors and may be sanctioned through financial penalties according to contractual quality of
service criteria.

4.5 Substation data Retrieval

Another group of data exchange applications in the power utility operational environment
concerns the non-real time transfer of power process data captured in the electrical substation
to data analysis platforms and engineering staff for the evaluation of events and confirmation
of device configurations. Substation process data retrieval is typically a web-service

27

application, making formatted data available when required. Data to be transferred is as

follows:
Event Reports typically log files and reports generated by an event recorder or historical
system which provides information on the change of state of operational equipment
Oscillography Files typically event triggered fault records generated by a protection
device or fault recorder. These may contain digital events and analogue waveforms.
Device Parameters and Settings data files uploaded to provide information on the
actual configuration of a device.

4.6 Mobile Workforce Communications

EPUs make extensive use of mobile communications in the management and support of their
infrastructure. In addition to traditional voice services for field-based operational workforce,
the evolution of working practices is leading increasingly to mobile data networking
applications connecting the maintenance staff to their support base, on-line documentation, and
workshop applications such as spare parts database. In particular, systems can largely benefit
from dedicated mobile data applications [10]. The operational mobile terminal units are
evolving towards Smartphones and Tablet Computers for which ruggedized field-proof
versions appear on the market. A number of projects for advanced mobile workforce
communications have been reported. A particularly interesting one in Japan [11] is dedicated to
disaster recovery. Another experimental project has developed a wearable terminal that
keeps field workers in continuous contact with support personnel and enables the real-time
transmission of camera images and audio from the work site to the support base which can then
provide precise support through voice interaction using a headset [12]. These permanent
contact systems can also provide checklists and templates for the elaboration of on-line realtime reporting and hence improve work safety, accident prevention and work efficiency. The
implementation of data-rich mobile communication systems requires indeed the existence of
high availability, disaster-resistant, high throughput wireless connectivity.
More than other communication services in the Utility, the provision model for mobile
workforce communications is often under assessment. There is no doubt that the most
economical solution is to use public mobile services which provide a high level of
geographical coverage through extensive deployment of Base stations and related
infrastructure, as well as continuous roll-out of new data services and applications. The EPU
pays for its communications, not for the infrastructure providing coverage.
However, an essential application of the mobile system, its usage by maintenance teams during
power outages and in disaster recovery situations, is severely constrained due to public base
stations insufficient power autonomy and severely degraded service accessibility/performance
when the network is widely solicited (e.g. during a disaster situation).
Deploying a security grade private mobile radio system (e.g. TETRA) with a high coverage
is costly and the roll-out of new data services and applications cannot be performed in pace
with their public counterpart. This may lead utility staff to use public mobiles even if the
company is equipped with its own private mobile facilities [10]. Many Electrical Utilities, in
particular those in the distribution sector, own or share with other critical users some type of
private security grade mobile network, although the issue remains largely a subject of
internal discussion. Appendix A2 describes one such experience in Portugal where a shared
TETRA service is used.
28

5 SECURITY, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

Security and safety applications in the Power Utility are not strictly speaking operational
because they do not consist of processes used to operate, control and protect the power system.
Still they are increasingly critical and subject to great attention in many Utilities. Many
applications are not yet implemented in a generalized manner in most Utilities but risk
awareness and concern is growing and this leads to regulatory pressure for implementing risk
mitigation applications.
Security & Safety applications can be classified as follows:

Protect Sites and Power System Assets from unauthorized access

Protect the Public from accessing to dangerous sites and apparatus and from the
impacts of the power system (e.g. dam water discharge alerts)
Protect the environment from the pollution or undesirable impacts of the power
components
Protect the Utility staff from the operational risks
Protect the Utility from Cyber threats on operational (or non-operational) systems

5.1 Security of Sites and Assets

5.1.1 Video-surveillance of sites
Growing concerns in recent years and the resulting regulatory obligations over the integrity and
security of national critical infrastructures and the danger from sabotage and intentional
damage have lead many power utilities to implement substantial systems for remote video
surveillance of substations and other operational installations. The substantial increase of
unmanned installations and night-time surveillance amplify this requirement.
Traditional video surveillance equipment based on proprietary solutions has been, and still is,
rather expensive. Introducing rather inexpensive, semi intelligent IP-based cameras opens a
new road to better control of the exterior border of substations. Surveillance cameras using
Video over IP are widely being used. Ideally High Definition video would be necessary in
order to provide the necessary resolution, however, the traffic volume makes these systems
very difficult to implement in a generalized manner.
Video-surveillance may also be used to prevent the possibility of damage from high voltage
installations to the public (e.g. electrical sites and apparatus inadvertently left accessible to
public). This is particularly important in street-side power distribution transformer and switch
shelters.
Remote video monitoring of installations is a tremendous source of data traffic across the
power network and can drive major telecom network rehabilitation.

5.1.2 Site Access Control

Electronic site access control systems are increasingly used to control, register and monitor the
physical access to operational sites. Smart electronic identity cards and biometrical
authentication are becoming part of the security and safety policy. Electronic access control

29

allows differentiated accessibility in time and across locations for different classes of staff
(operational staff, service contractors, maintenance, etc.). These applications require fast and
reliable data communications for authentication and access registration.

5.1.3 Environmental Hazards Monitoring (Sites and Assets)

Environmental awareness and concern is leading power utilities to implement remote
environmental monitoring systems for producing an early warning on incidents and hence to
avoid environmental impact. Typically, these applications are linked to environmental sensors
for detecting fire, smoke, floods, gas and chemicals and provide alarm information to remote
monitoring platforms.

5.1.4 Intruder Detection

Protecting sites like power plants or substations from intruders has always been a main concern
for Utilities, not only for the site protection itself but also for human and animal safety. Fences
and guards were in the past the only solutions, but with increasingly unmanned installations,
intrusion detection systems are being introduced.
The classical intrusion detection system is composed of sensors (radio, laser, dry contacts, )
connected to a local collector unit that monitors the sensor states and, in case of a detection,
sends online notifications to the Security Operational Centre (SOC) of the Utility and local
security forces. More recent developments use video-surveillance cameras and image analyser
software that alerts SOC operators in case of image pattern changes.

5.2 Human Safety & Operational Security

5.2.1 Earth Connection Monitoring
Regulatory obligations on human safety impose in certain countries that the physical
connection to Security Earth must be visible by the staff during intervention on HV apparatus
in a substation or on a power line. Video-monitoring may be used in certain cases to fulfill this
regulatory obligation. In this case, a video camera can provide a remote visual verification
of ground connections. This application remains local and its service requirements are to be
taken into account with other local area communications.

5.2.2 Isolated Worker Safety Communications

Health and safety regulating authorities in many countries provide particular rules to deal with
the case of workers whose duties bring them to work alone in a site, in order to protect them
from the consequent hazards [13]. Emergency situations may arise due to sudden onset of a
medical condition, accidental work-related injury or death, attack by an animal, exposure to
elements, or by becoming stranded without transport, food or water. A person is considered as
alone at work when he cannot be seen or heard by other persons who can provide assistance if
necessary.
The Power Utility must ensure that a means of communication is available in the event of an
emergency to enable the employee to call for help, and also ensure that a procedure for regular
and systematic contact with the employee at pre-determined intervals has been established.

30

1. Fixed Telephone service - The simplest communication service for isolated workers is
indeed the accessibility of a telephone at site, provided that the person is able to reach
the telephone in an emergency. This service must be available not only to the
operational staff but also to external parties contracted for specific tasks in the Utility
premises. The telephone system must provide an emergency number accessible to all
categories of users.
2. Radio communications Different categories of two-way radio systems are in use in
different Utilities for traveling staff and for employees working in large sites such as
power plants. Mobile workforce communications are covered in section 4.6 and may
be used also for assuring the safety during the trip to site depending upon coverage
constraints. Usage of private mobile radio as a means of assuring workers safety needs
careful location of base stations and identification of shadow areas as well as an
adequate procedure to assure the supply of charged batteries. Public mobile phone is
used in some Utilities as a cost-saving alternative, but may present serious drawbacks
with service coverage and service continuity particularly when the Power Utility
employees are intervening to re-establish electrical power in a region due to the
extremely short power autonomy of the public base stations.
3. Satellite Communication systems Satellite phones overcome the problems of public
mobile phone in poorly covered areas and the dependence on local power supply of the
base stations. Satellite systems also allow implementing Location Beacon Systems
determining the location of the employee through GPS and signaling this location to an
operational base permanently. Care should be taken however as their operation is
affected by damage to aerials, failure of vehicle power supplies, or vehicle damage.
4. Personal security systems These portable wireless transmitters are permanently in
communication with a central receiver and may include a non-movement sensor that
will automatically activate an alarm transmission if the transceiver has not moved
within a certain time
5. Emergency location beacons When working in particularly remote areas, emergency
location beacon systems which are automatically activated in emergency situations
may be used. These systems do not depend upon the vehicle power supply and do not
risk damage as satellite communication systems.

5.2.3 Public Warning Communications

Hydro Power Generation Utilities have extensive security communications related to the
monitoring of Dam installations and their associated equipment.
The alert of flooding due to water release to avoid dam overloading or lightning warning
during thunderstorms are some of the capabilities of Dam Management Systems.
A Dam Management System implemented by Kyushu Electric Power Company in Japan [14]
is presented in figure 5.1. The system collects meteorological data (rainfall, etc.) and dam
status information (e.g. water level and inflow) from different stations to the dam management
centre which transmits discharge gate operation commands to release water in the event of
excessive rainfall or high water level in the reservoir. In this case, the dam security system

31

operates the Discharge Alert devices. Sirens and information display boards notify the public
that water will be discharged, preventing water-related accidents.
Kyushu Electric Power also informs its customers through a specific website about the location
and time of lightning strikes in Kyushu region. The lightning strikes forecast is a result of
collected field values measured by sensors across the operating region, this information is than
sent and processed centrally, and is used as the criteria of judgment for the generation of
lightning, thunder, and launching, making possible protection against lightning and safety
control.

Figure 5.1 Kyushu Electric Power Company Dam Management System [14]

5.2.4 Hydraulic Structure Operation and Maintenance Applications

Hydro Generators have flood warning and security surveillance applications that are discussed
elsewhere in this technical brochure. They also have applications to ensure the integrity of their
dams and other hydraulic structures and for the provision of support services to operators,
maintenance crews and field inspection staff.
Hydro Generators need to monitor parameters relating to the long term stability of dams and so
have regular inspection programs for measuring discharge from seepage points and also for
measuring dam deformation as recorded by strain gauges spread across the entire dam.
Typically this data is manually recorded during inspections and keyed in or uploaded back in
the office to the applications utilizing this data. Inspection data can now be uploaded from the
many site monitoring points by the inspector inputting the data directly to the companies
corporate network using a Wi-Fi connection back to a local Wi-Fi AP Access Point. An
Access Point, with a range of up to several hundred meters, will typically adequately cover the
dam and provide very economical last mile service delivery.
This same network can also be used for operational visual monitoring purposes using IP video
cameras so that decisions can be made in advance of when problems escalate to the stage that

32

they are picked up by conventional SCADA alarms. (e.g. amount of debris building up at trash
racks or in the vicinity of critical flow monitoring weirs). IP video cameras are also used as
confirmation of SCADA alarms in flood control situations and hence provide extra information
for difficult operational decisions or where associated events such as fallen trees, rain or snow
impedes access to the site.
Field staff can also use such a network to access water level and gate position data to enable
onsite calibration of transducers without the need to tie up office staff in relaying values back
to the field staff. They can also send photographs, etc directly back to specialist engineering
staff from remote locations thereby sometimes saving travel time to remote locations for
specialist staff.
In all of the above, security policies and technologies have to be rigorously applied due to the
openness of Wi-Fi networks. Typically technologies such as WPA2, strong authentication,
IPSec tunnels, firewalls, etc are mandatory because any Wi-Fi network has to be regarded as
completely untrusted in effect the same as an internet connection.
Many Hydro Generators also have UHF/VHF radio networks that support their operations by
transporting data regarding stream flows as well as snow and meteorological parameters. This
data is used in applications to optimize the Hydro Generators operations and also to account
for the use of water as part of their water license conditions.
Lastly Hydro Generators also have protection systems which are used for the reduction in
impact caused by the failure of a hydraulic structure, particularly for the detection of a burst or
significantly leaking penstock. These systems are usually based on differential flow
measurement (e.g. at either end of the penstock) with automatic control back to guard gates.
Similar to electrical protection systems, reliability is critical for this application and hence
duplication of systems and communications facilities is inevitably employed. However a much
longer transmission delay (e.g. seconds) is acceptable for these protection systems due to the
relatively slow speed of operation of hydraulic gates.
Hydro Generator hydraulic assets are often located in remote areas outside the coverage of
telecommunications providers. However in some cases the main hydraulic structure may be
able to be connected to a telecommunications Service Provider and used as a local hub to
aggregate the communications required to support the above applications.

33

5.3 Cyber-Security applications communication

The exchange of information across the different sites of the power utility has made it essential
to implement numerous security barriers and intrusion detection/prevention systems across the
network. As the number of security related devices and systems increases, it becomes
necessary to reinforce them through coordinated administration, supervision and efficient logs
processing.
Some Power Utilities such as RTE in France have set up, within a national structure, a Security
Operational Center (SOC) which prevents and reacts to security related events [15]. The
missions of the SOC are as follows:
1. Security device Centralized Administration guarantees the filtering rules
homogeneity regarding data exchange protocols and access checking through the
translation of security policies. Centralized administration sets Security rules for
firewall, updates security software, and manages security oriented VPNs..
2. Security device Centralized Supervision - provides an image of current status of
specific security network equipment and applications (network card, memory, CPU,
Hard disks, Application processes) and enables preventive or curative measures.
Centralized supervision allows quick identification of breakdowns and generates
warnings for SOC operators.
3. Security Events Log Analysis - The security events elaborated analysis of the
company network allows to give a correlated image about what happened in real time.
Information is collected from all security devices and processed to normalize,
aggregate and/or correlate depending on security policies to provide, in real time,
diagnosis of intrusion or intrusion attempts. Beyond real time indicators, this supplies
security reports which may be used for investigations and understanding of incidents or
trends especially through dashboards.
The operation of the described process requires a Security Management Communication
Service with a high level of reliability and security (through encryption), covering all sites of
the Utility in which Security devices and systems are implemented.

34

6 OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS AND SERVICE LEVEL

AGREEMENTS
6.1 Operational Coverage and Topology
Telecom coverage and service access to different operational sites is the first condition for the
adoption of any particular service provisioning solution.
HV Grid sites are accessed in a very cost effective manner through a dedicated
telecommunication infrastructure, based on fibre over HV lines (and PLC). Considering
the peripheral location of HV substations and power plants, a Telco is not always in a
position to provide access with the required capacity.
Utility offices in urban environment with no proximity to the HV grid, cannot be accessed
directly through the dedicated network, necessitating the installation of new underground
cables, urban microwave, or other wireless last mile connections. The approach may be
unfeasible or costly. These sites are often more economically served by public telecom
operators sharing infrastructure with other customers.
Hydroelectric power generation plants and off-shore wind farms often have no other
service alternative than dedicated communications or VSAT services. On the other hand,
dispersed generation facilities on customer premises may be covered by public telecom
operators.
The topology of the network infrastructure has direct influence on the performance and fault
tolerance that can be expected from the communication service [16].
The number of transit and switching nodes to be crossed determines the time delay and the
availability for the connection. Direct links through dedicated fibre over the HV line are
most favoured for critical protection applications. Telco services are often discarded in this
case due to the impossibility to establish a direct physical link (topology is based on
criteria such as customer concentration, availability/cost of leased fibres, and site facilities)
The possibility of establishing two independent routes between two access points of the
network, determines the fault tolerance that can be incorporated into the network design.
Typically, a Control Centre towards which a great number of communications converge
cannot be located on a secondary spur of the communication network.
Control
Centre

Power Plant

Control
Centre

Provider
Nodal
Switch

substation
Service Provider

substation

400 kV Line

400 kV Line

substation
Dedicated Network

Fig 6.1 Topology of Telco and dedicated network and their correlation to the Power system
35

6.2 Time Constraints

Deterministic and controlled time behaviour for communications of time-sensitive applications
is one the major reasons leading utilities to deploy and maintain dedicated telecommunication
networks. In these networks, the time performance (as well as availability and fault tolerance)
can be adapted to the requirements of each application through an appropriate choice and
blending of technologies and proper topological structuring. These time control methods are
further described in this section. On the other hand, when public telecom services are
employed, time control is rarely part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of the Service
Provider. Generally, the Service Provider cannot commit contractually to anything better than
20-30ms communication delay and is therefore excluded as a solution when faster applications
such as protection relaying are to be carried.
Time behaviour of a communication service can be characterized through a number of different
parameters as follows:
a. Time Latency (delay)
Time latency is the absolute delay introduced by the communication network into an
application. Time latency is an important constraint wherever a remote command (or
remote information needed for elaborating a command) is to be received in constrained
time. Time latency also matters where a bi-directional exchange is to be established with
limited waiting time at the receiving end.

Communication channels used for protection relay applications may need absolute time
latency as low as 5 to 10 ms depending upon the protection scheme and the power
systems fault clearance time (around 80 - 100ms depending on the voltage level).

SCADA system overall performance can be degraded by a high time latency or even
made completely inoperable through RTU communication time-outs.

Voice communication can be seriously degraded by high time latency (more than
150ms) through echo.

Absolute time latency problems may be avoided through an appropriate design based on
Time Division Multiplexed circuits (e.g. SDH), constrained usage of switching and routing
and lack of traffic queuing for critical applications. For delay critical services delivered
over IP, pre-established static routes may be employed to ensure guaranteed end-to-end
performance.
It should be noted that the real-time requirements of SCADA RTU communications are
generally in the range of seconds, as compared to order of magnitude smaller transmission
times across a thoroughly designed SCADA Ethernet/IP infrastructure. The main issue here
is therefore the number of intermediate nodes in the routing of SCADA information as well
as the time for any encapsulation and concatenation.
b. Time Predictability (delay variations) and Timing Jitter
Time predictability determines the delay variation of a communication channel. It defines
the capability to predict the time delay of the communication network, independently from
the traffic load from other services being carried across the network, and whatever being
36

the networks state. Time predictability assigns a probability distribution around a nominal
time delay value and therefore a maximum acceptable delay.
Protection applications (in particular current differential schemes) and voice services are
particularly sensitive to delay variations.
Time predictability is achieved by avoiding traffic queues which generate variable service
times and by imposing constrained routing (e.g. maximum number of hops, pre-determined
back-up route, or no route resilience). In case of an SDH system, ring protection must be
avoided or carefully analyzed.
c.

Go/Return Path differential delay

Time coherence among the remote points of a distributed application is sometimes
achieved by initiating a remote loop-back and measuring the go-and-return transfer time.
Considering that the go and return times are equal, the transfer time between two sites is in
this manner calculated. This type of transfer time estimation is used in older generation
differential protection relays and also in absolute time clock distribution systems. This
renders the systems very sensitive to Go/Return path delay variations. In the case of current
differential protection systems, a maximal differential delay of less than 400 microseconds
is often necessary.
Differential delay is controlled through avoiding store-and-forward with traffic queuing
and variable service time, and bi-directional route switching (i.e. when a fault is detected in
one sense of communication, both directions of communication must switch to a same
alternate bi-directional route).

d. Restoration time
Transporting operational traffic imposes a time limit on service restoration following a
network fault condition. Some operational services require Hitless Switching (no loss of
service during the switchover from a normal configuration to a backup state).
Restoration time depends upon the employed communication technology and the
topological complexity of the network:

End-to-end alternate route switch-over for each critical service is very fast but does not
assure a high level of resilience,

Ring protection across an SDH network (e.g. SNCP protection) can restore in less than
50ms.

The restoration mechanism of Ethernet, the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) has a
convergence time which depends upon the complexity of the Ethernet mesh. The
restoration time may be too long for SCADA communications. More elaborate options
such as Rapid Spanning Tree (RSTP) reduce this time.

Routing in an IP network is based on different algorithms which re-establish the routing

table in each node after any network configuration or status change. Typically RIPbased routing requires around one minute for restoring communications while an
OSPF-based system can restore in 5-10 seconds.

37

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enables the network to restore service using
pre-established alternate routes for each Virtual Private Network (VPN) and can in this
way reduce considerably the high restoration time.

The time behavior of the communication network is determined by the following aspects:
1. TDM versus Packet network The migration from conventional TDM (Time
Division Multiplexing) networks towards Ethernet and IP increases considerably the
networks bandwidth efficiency (avoid idle bandwidth), flexibility (network interfaces
and routing) and resilience. However, it is also a major source of concern for the
control of time behavior. Assembling data packets before transmission and store-andforward of the packet at each intermediate node causes additional buffering delay
which increases with the packet size and with the number of transit nodes. Furthermore,
dynamic data routing needed for network resilience, gives rise to delay variation and
lack of time predictability. Moreover, the fully deterministic behaviour of the TDM is
being replaced by the statistical behaviour of the packet-switched multi-service network
where queuing and traffic profiles determine the overall delay.
2. Multi-service Integration Bandwidth efficiency in packet networks is achieved
through integrating multiple traffic streams into a same packet network. Priority
queuing mechanisms are employed to assure better time performance for more critical
services.
This implicates that one or multiple traffic queues are established at each
routing/switching node. A queue-based store and forward communication system
provides essentially a Best Effort service with statistical time characteristics. This
issue is often masked through over-dimensioning of the network and order of
magnitude smaller time requirements of the applications.
3. Network Resilience versus Fixed Routing Network resilience ensures the continuity
of service in presence of network faults, but at the same time renders indeterminate the
routing of communications. Time predictability is generally sacrificed by improved
resilience. Traffic streams which are sensitive to delay variations must generally be
treated separately without service restoration mechanisms described previously under
restoration time.
4. L1/L2/L3 Partitioning and Topological Structuring In order to provide adequate
time performance to critical services while maintaining bandwidth efficiency,
flexibility, cost and resilience, it is necessary to design the network with an adequate
level of information forwarding at physical, link and network layers.

Direct or TDM connections for best time performance but at low bandwidth
efficiency, flexibility and resilience.
Ethernet Switching with Virtual Networking (VLAN) and priority assignment for
fast transfer of information packets (frames)
IP Routing for maximum resilience and multi-servicing

Different network topologies can in this way be obtained for different services over a
same telecom infrastructure leading to different numbers of intermediate nodes at each
layer.

38

5. Network Monitoring, SLA Management and Planning If managed services are to

be used for time-sensitive applications, it is important that the Service Provider be
contractually committed through SLA to assure the time constraints (absolute time
latency delay variations and restoration times) knowing that very often the SLA is not
explicit enough to allow many critical applications. Moreover, a contractual
commitment on time performance must be continuously (or periodically) monitored
and effectively sanctioned: Time performance monitoring functions must be associated
to the networks performance management facilities in order to assure that contractual
obligations are met.

6.3 Availability Constraints

Availability is a service-related statistical parameter which can be defined as the probability of
proper operation of the network for a given information exchange. It is normally quoted as a
percentage of up time of the service, or the percentage of time that the network can
effectively forward traffic (e.g. 99.999%). It can be estimated theoretically and measured
practically on a network-wide or per-circuit basis.
Service Availability can be expressed as:
AService = 1 (

Mean.Time.To. Re store.Service
Mean.Time.Between.ServiceOutages

Some currently used values are given below:

Availability
objective
99.999%
99.99%
99.9%

Service Downtime
5.25 min/year
(~5 Hours/57 years)
52.5 min/year
(~5 Hours/ 5.7 years)
525 min/year
(~5 Hours/ 0.57 years)

Example of Service
Protection Communication
SCADA, Operational Voice
Data Service

However, this statistical parameter, widely used in public telecommunications, in computer

systems and networks, and in defining SLAs must be used with precaution when applied to
operation-critical services with an extremely low service-to-idle time ratio.
As an example, consider a managed service with an apparently high contractual availability of
99.999 %. This gives an unavailability figure of 1E-5, and an unavailable time of 311 sec per
year.
A Protection Relay system sending 50 trip commands in one year can be unavailable
during 6 seconds each time and still respect 99.999% availability!
For low duty cycle operation-critical services, it is more appropriate to use service
dependability defined as the conditional probability of a service being available when it is

39

solicited. If we consider the unavailability of the service as being independent from

(uncorrelated with) the probability of requiring the service, then:
Dependability = Availability x Service-to-Idle Time Ratio
However, the hypothesis of service unavailability being uncorrelated with service requirement
is often far from being evident for operational communications. Typically, a power system
fault is a situation that initiates extensive exchange of information, but it also induces
impairments in the operation of the communication system.
Unavailability in a communication service has different origins as follows:
a. Network infrastructure faults
b. Channel impairments (noise and interference, synchronization loss, fading, etc.)
inducing error detection and data rejection. It should be noted that the borderline
between Unavailable Time and Degraded Performance (Available) Time is very
dependent upon the communication service and its specific constraints. This point is
further discussed under Service Integrity (section 6.6).
c. Timing, queuing and priority impairments leading to unsuitable Quality of Service and
late delivery of information
d. Works and maintenance in the network infrastructure without adequate measures to
assure service continuity (excludes restoration works for the service itself).
Service availability can be improved in the following manners:

Reduce the occurrence of network infrastructure faults. This can be achieved through more
reliable and fault tolerant network devices and infrastructure resources.

Reduce channel and timing impairments in the network. This can be done through suitable
transmission link design, synchronization planning, traffic engineering, performance
planning, and installation practice.

Reduce the impact of network component faults and channel impairments on the delivered
service. This can be achieved through a more resilient network design and duplicated
access.

Reduce the duration of service down-time following a network fault. This can be achieved
through faster detection and localization of network faults, faster identification of impacted
services and faster restoration of service through network maintenance. Reducing downtime is therefore dependant upon the service and infrastructure management and
maintenance processes and organization, well-trained staff, well-dimensioned stocks of
spares and adapted monitoring tools discussed in more detail in later sections.

40

6.4 Service Survivability and Resilience

Survivability is defined as the ability of the communication service to continue during and
after a disturbance (network infrastructure fault). Many operation-critical communication
services do not tolerate service interruption and down-time. In addition to the statistical
concept of availability, it is essential to assure that, as a minimum, no single fault in the
reliability chain shall jeopardize the application.
The concept of service survivability perceived at the user end, translates into Resilience in the
telecom Service Providers infrastructure. Resilience is the ability to provide and maintain an
acceptable level of service in presence of faults.
It is achieved through a multi-level resilience model [17]:
1. Fault tolerant network elements with duplicated core components and duplication of
access equipment at critical sites
2. Survivable topology ( e.g. Ring and Mesh structures allowing alternate routing)
3. Disruption-tolerant end-to-end transport through protection switching and service
restoration mechanisms (e.g. SDH MSP and Ring protection, Ethernet Spanning Tree
Protocol (RSTP), IP routing mechanisms (e.g. OSPF)
4. Fault Tolerant and adaptive applications and overlays Main/backup end-to-end
SCADA RTU communication circuits and Protection channels
5. Adapted Management strategy and system supervision through appropriate fault
management tools dedicated to the operational services
The following points must be noted in relation to service survivability and consequently in
relation to the design of resilience into the network:

Service Restoration Time This point has already been discussed under Time
Constraints section. Different levels of network resilience operate at different time scales
which may be compatible or not with different applications maximum acceptable outage
duration. Typically, what is commonly called Hitless Switching signifies that an
established connection for an application remains unaffected by the disruption time due to
the switching of the communication path or resource.

Routing Control Designing resilience into the network generally signifies injecting a
degree of uncertainty into the routing of information and the resources which are used for
delivering the service. This in turn, impacts the absolute time latency of the network and
generates delay variation. In the most time-sensitive applications (e.g. Protection Relay
communications), resilience is restricted to the highest level, that is to say to the
application itself (main/backup end-to-end routes). The two communication channels for
these applications must employ no common path, no common node and no common
equipment, so that no single fault disrupts the application. This requirement generally
requires a total control of the channels routing.

Underlying infrastructure Where the telecom Service Provider employs lower layer
connectivity service delivered by another infrastructure provider to build the network, it
becomes difficult or impossible to guarantee the independence of main and backup routes.

41

In particular, when a public telecom operator and managed services are involved, tracking
the full routing of connections can become extremely difficult.

Coordination of Resilience - Applying different layers of resilience in the network to the

same service without adequate coordination may cause unnecessary cost and complexity.
As an example, main/back-up end-to-end application level fault tolerance, Spanning Tree
protection on the Ethernet connectivity and ring protection in the underlying SDH network
may all operate on the same network fault with different time scales to switch the traffic
from the same topological path to another unique topological path.

Dormant Faults - An important issue in assuring service survivability is the capability to

detect latent faults in the back-up routes. A classical strategy adopted in power system
telecom networks, is the cross-over of Main and Backup routes for different applications
as presented in figure(x )(e.g. Protection Line 1 / Line 2). This approach uses each of the
two paths, and its associated resources, for one Main and one Back-up route, and therefore
checks continuously each path to detect any anomalies.

Management Facilities In an increasingly resilient network, permanent network route

monitoring becomes an essential part of the Network Management System. It lets the
network supervisor track and observe the routing of information at different network
infrastructure layers at a given instance of time. This improves considerably the contextawareness required to control network resilience and therefore service survivability. In
addition, the management facilities determines the impact of network infrastructure faults
on the service delivered to higher layer of network and therefore allows the coordination of
resilience at different levels.

Indeterminate Routing

Controlled Routing

?
N1

N1

N1

B1

B1

B1

N1
B1

B2

B2

B2

N2

N2

N2

B2
N2

Fig 6.2 Double routing and crossed routing for SCADA and Protection communications [16]

42

6.5 Service Security Constraints

Information security is a global issue covering the entire information and communication
system. It is treated as a full end-to-end process through an appropriate Security Policy
identifying security domains, taking measures to mitigate risks and devising periodic audit
schemes to assess the effectiveness. The subject is extensively treated in other CIGRE
publications [18] and by NERC CIP standards (North American Electric Reliability
Corporation, Critical Infrastructure Protection).
This section only presents the security requirements for the network cloud expected by the
Operational Service User so that the telecommunication connectivity shall not compromise the
security level that the Users information infrastructure has achieved. It is in particular valid
when there is a separation between the telecom Service Provider and the operational
application infrastructure.
Security risk mitigation measures for the telecom Service Provider are presented in figure 6.3.
a. The physical access point to the communication service must be secured and possibly
allow a network access user authentication (e.g. RADIUS).
b. The connectivity service across the network must be isolated from other services
through dedicated physical bandwidth or through separate virtual private networks
(VLAN/VPN). In case of multi-service IP integration, security barriers and intrusion
detection must also be incorporated into the communication network. The connection
across the network can further be protected through encryption.
c. Telecom network management platform can constitute a major vulnerability in the
provision of communication services. Access to this platform must be secured through
physical protection (access to the facilities), authentication and logging.
d. Access to the equipment constituting the nodes of the communication network is also a
major source of vulnerability. Restricted physical access to network equipment, secured
HMI, and disabling of remote configuration and parameter setting are common
measures to mitigate risks.
Service Isolation (Physical, VLAN, VPN)
Encryption, Firewall, Intrusion Detection
Physical Protection
User Authentication

User
Access

Protected HMI,
Physical Protection

Network

User
Access

Network Node

Telecom
Management
System (TMS)

Protected Access,
User Authentication
Access Logging

Remote Access to TMS

& Telecom Node HMI

Figure 6.3 Security risk mitigation measures for the telecom Service Provider

43

6.6 Service Integrity

Service integrity is the aptitude of the communication network to deliver the transmitted
information without degradation, without loss and without on-purpose alteration.
Integrity of information relating to on-purpose alteration has been covered under Service
Security. The present section deals with degradation and loss of information due to channel
impairments.
In digital communication networks, data communication channel integrity is characterized by
error performance. The concept of long term bit error rate and error probability is widely used
but does not contain any information regarding the distribution of errors in time. For many
services the distribution of errors is more important than the actual number of errors.
Three parameters are defined by ITU-T to describe the error performance of a 64kbps
connection [19]:
1. Errored Second (ES) is a 1-second period that contains one or more errors. For data
services the information is commonly transmitted in blocks containing error detection
mechanisms. Blocks received with one or more transmission errors are subject to
retransmission. In order to have a high throughput, it is necessary to minimize the
number of errored blocks. The 1-second period was historically adopted as a
compromise value for data block size.
2. Severely Errored Second (SES) is a 1-second period where the short term bit error
rate evaluated over one second exceeds 10-3. An SES can lead to a loss of
synchronization and it is considered that the connection is unusable during the time
interval.
3. Degraded Minute (DM) is a one minute period where the short term error ratio
exceeds 10-6. The degraded minute has been devised principally for digital telephony
for which the mentioned error rate is the subjectively perceived boundary of virtually
unimpaired transmission.
CIGRE used the above mentioned ITU-T definitions to set a power utility objective on the
parameters fixed at 15% of international connection objectives. It considered a reference
connection composed of 5 hops between a remote substation and a control centre, and 20 hops
in inter-control centre connections [20]:
End-to-end Error Performance Objective for 64kbps Channel
ITU-T G821 CIGRE [20]
Errored Second (ES)
8%
1.2 %
Severely Errored Second (SES)
0.2 %
0.03 %
Degraded Minutes (DM)
10 %
1.5 %
ITU-T defined the time limit between unavailability and degraded performance as 10
consecutive seconds. This means that if the bit error ratio exceeds 10-3 (SES) for more than ten
consecutive seconds, the connection is considered as unavailable for that time. Otherwise, the
time interval is considered as available but with degraded performance as shown in figure 6.4.
Unavailable time begins when ten consecutive SES are observed. It ends when no SES is

44

observed during ten consecutive seconds. These latter seconds count as available time. The
counting of degraded minutes is carried out only when the connection is available (excludes
unavailable periods).
Despite important technological changes in telecommunications, the error performance
objective and its related definitions are still widely used in power utility networks, in particular
for planning and testing 2Mbps connectivity through SDH infrastructure and the primary
access multiplexing systems. However, it can be fully inadequate in some situations.
For critical applications such as Protection Relay communication, available time with
degraded performance is not a reasonable definition. A system which presents one SES every
ten seconds (or even 1 SES every two seconds!) cannot be considered as available with
degraded performance.
Total Time
Unavailable Time

Available Time
ES
SES
DM
Data Integrity
Performance

Degraded
Performance

Availability
Performance

Figure 6.4 Available time definitions [20]

Packet mode Integrity

In packet mode communications, error detection coding and possible retransmission

mechanisms prevent the great majority of transmission errors to be seen by the Service User.
Impaired information packets are either lost (e.g. in UDP/IP) or corrected through
retransmission (e.g. TCP/IP). A marginal amount of transmission errors, called residual errors,
are undetected by the error detection mechanism and handed over to the user. Operational
applications may have a specified objective for the Residual Error Probability (e.g. 10-12
whatever be the channel bit error rate for Telecontrol Commands) in particular where a
residual error cannot be detected at higher layers of the information exchange system or by the
application.
Furthermore, an information packet that arrives with a delay outside the application time
constraints is considered as lost information. In this way, where a retransmission mechanism
exists, the application time tolerance can still lead the valid packet to be considered as lost.
The most common integrity check in a packet data network is therefore Lost Packets statistics
through a simple echo response (Ping) across the network. Ping commands measure the
round-trip time, record any packet loss, and print a statistical summary of the echo response
packets received, together with minimum, mean, and maximum round trip times. The
command can be of different lengths (number of bytes of accompanied data) to simulate
different typical packet lengths corresponding to an application.

45

6.7 Future Sustainability, Legacy Openness and Vendor

Independence
Utility operational applications and substation assets have in general a much higher service
life-time than telecommunication services. A newly deployed substation application is
expected to operate 10-15 years before being replaced. The adopted communication services
for such an application are moreover expected to be stable and field-proven at the time of
deployment. The communication solution, service or technology must therefore be sustainable
well beyond the expected life-time of any new generation, mass market, consumer oriented
service or technology.
If a public Telco service is employed, the service may disappear before the end-of-life of the
power system application. If a dedicated telecom service is used, the interfacing units or
equipment may no longer be supported by the manufacturer.
Furthermore, the upgrade of communication system software release or core components,
which is a current operation in most communication networks, may be extremely difficult and
may require long term intervention planning if critical applications such as power system
protection relaying are to be carried over the network.
Similarly, implementing a new communication infrastructure requires the ability to connect
many generations of power system applications rendering the issue of legacy interfacing
essential. A new communication solution must provide a way to serve existing applications
which may coexist with their replacing systems for a very long time.
In order to assure future upgrade and legacy openness, communication solutions and the
corresponding service delivery scheme must not depend upon the use of any proprietary
interfaces or technologies and must be as far as possible technology-independent.

6.8 Environmental Constraints

Many access points for operational services are at electrical substations, power plants, and
other electrical installations. Communication equipment is therefore subject to the same
electromagnetic environment as other electronic instrumentation. Service access interface must
be adequately protected. Equipment cabinets must be closed, fitted with accessories (Earth bar,
surge protection, EMC filters etc.) and wired according to substation installation codes and
practices. Cables and wires running within the site perimeter can be a source of conducted
disturbances to the communication system. A detailed specification for these EMC immunity
aspects is given in [21].
The respect of these precautions and practices is costly and their necessity cannot always be
perceived immediately. The consequence of their non-respect can only be checked the painful
way during a power system anomaly generating large transient currents and voltages.
The climatic control inside an electrical power site is often minimal and any installed
electronic equipment or its cabinet must resist temperature, humidity, dust, etc. at levels which
in general do not correspond to telecom and IT environment. Closed equipment cabinets with
an adequate degree of protection are generally required. Climatic aspects are also specified in
relevant IEC standards.

46

It should be noted that adopting managed services through a public provider does not remove
the expenditure and effort associated to these aspects because access equipment must be
installed at Utility sites.
Lastly, the impact of Earth Potential Rise (EPR) during a station earth fault needs to be taken
into account in connecting a new telecommunications service to a HV substation or power
station. As an example, an insulation breakdown of a 330kV asset to earth with a typical fault
current of 20kA may cause the station earth mat to rise up to 8kV or more above remote earth
potential. The exact figure depends on many factors including actual fault current, soil
resistivity, earth grid impedance, etc. The way the earth mat, fences and external connections
were initially designed and interconnected would have ensured safety of people on site and
remote to site. However subsequently adding a new telecommunications physical connection
without proper understanding of EPR could cause a very dangerous situation to occur to staff at
the station or remote from the station due to the difference in earth potential that exists during
the earth fault. This is easily solved by avoiding connecting copper communications cables to
HV stations by using optical fibre or radio solutions. If there is no other economical solution
other than connection of a HV zone to a telecommunications Service Provider by a copper
cable, then it is essential for safety reasons that appropriate isolation devices are used.

6.9 Defining Service Level Agreements

Whichever the mode of provisioning of telecom services in the EPU, and the relationship
between the Service User and Provider (Formal, Semi-formal or Implicit) it is essential to
assure a common understanding of the qualities and attributes of the delivered service. The
contractual document that reflects these attributes as well as the obligations and liabilities of
the Service Provider towards the Service User is called the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
An SLA allows the Service User to express the operational constraints of its application as
defined in the previous sections to the telecom Service Provider and to obtain the providers
assurance that the delivered service shall meet these requirements.
An SLA also allows the Service Provider to define the network resources and management
processes (as presented in chapter 10 hereafter) that he must use in order to meet his
contractual obligations towards the Service User. Furthermore, the Service Provider may use
the SLA towards his service customers in order to specify the level of service that he expects
from his contractors and providers (e.g. underlying infrastructure or support services).
Finally the SLA allows the Service Provider to know what obligations the Service User must
meet so that the service can be delivered and maintained by the Service Provider. Examples
may include the provision of rack or floor space for the Service Providers equipment, the
provision of AC or DC power, access during and out of hours, third party insurance coverage,
etc.
The precision and the exhaustiveness of the SLA become particularly important when the
provider is multi-customer and multi-service and the more we move towards a fully procured
telecom service.
However, very often multi-customer Telecom Service Providers such as public telecom
operators provide a catalog of standard SLAs, none of which may meet the requirements of the
EPU. Standard Operator SLAs are usually not sufficiently precise to guarantee the

47

fulfillment of operational constraints as described previously and the Service Provider may not
be prepared to review his entire networks operation mode and operational process to meet one
customers SLA requirements. In this case, assessing the most appropriate SLA of the provider
against the operational constraints of the EPU applications allows the estimation of the gap and
the risk analysis associated to the potential impact of this gap. The following checklist has been
prepared to serve utilities for specifying or assessing SLAs in the EPU operational context.
Figure 6.5 - SLA checklist for EPU procuring telecom connectivity services
SLA Parameter
Description / Comments
Interface type
As required by the application, (e.g. Optical Ethernet, G703, RS232).
Choosing a physical interface such as Ethernet that can be scaled
remotely results in easier expansion of services as the need grows.
Bandwidth and
Guaranteed minimum and Peak bandwidth available to the service and
throughput
degree of flexibility
% number of
It is important to set a policy at the edge of the EPU network to avoid
packets allowed
exceeding the allowable limits, otherwise the policy on entry to the
per service for
Service Providers network with either drop the packets or remark them
each procured
to the least priority service, leading to poor service performance due to
Quality of Service oversubscription of the service by the EPU itself. Conversely you want
(QOS) level.
to see the Service Provider to apply limiting policies on entry to their
network in order to protect the EPU service from contention due to
oversubscribed services from other Service Provider customers.
Time Latency
For packet based services, these need to be defined for each class of
(end-to-end delay) service. Voice services for example will be processed via separate low
latency queues.
Delay Variation
For packet based services these need to be defined for each QOS level.
(Jitter)
As is the case with most data service parameters these are usually
expressed by the Service Provider as monthly averages. Consider how
to manage the situation of high peaks that dont cause the monthly
averages to exceed the Service Provider specifications. (High peak
jitters can cause voice degradation or network convergence problems
and still not hit the monthly average parameters.)
Go-Return delay
For certain protection relay communications. Asymmetrical delay will
difference
cause certain protection schemes to fail.
Service Restore
The time required for automatic reconfiguration mechanisms to act upon
Time on network
the network and hence to restore service (e.g. Spanning Tree Protocol,
change
SDH Ring Protection restore time, etc.)
Availability
Distribution, frequency, duration, and timing of service failures.
Integrity and
Specified for each procured class of service.
Packet Loss
Power Faults
Critical services not impacted by power system disturbances.
Correlation
Precautions for not losing service during disturbance.

48

Figure 6.5 (continued) - SLA Checklist for EPU Procuring Telecom Connectivity Services
SLA Parameter
Description / Comments
Resilience and
Control of the provider on the routes taken by services in normal time
Routing Control
and on anomalies (determines the capability of establishing duplicated
communications without common point of failure).
The Service Provider and Service User need to agree on the routing
protocol between their networks, and to set various metrics that impact
on the resilience of the interconnected networks.
Power Autonomy
The time duration for which the service can be delivered in case of A.C.
power outage
Maximum Time to Service Providers ability to respond to service failures and carry out the
Restore Service
necessary repairs within the maximum specified time. Different times
will be defined for urban, regional, rural and remote locations
depending on the location of Service Provider maintenance staff.
Dual Route
Ability to guarantee that specified connections between two points
Independence
never use a same equipment, cable segment, power supply, node or
cable conduit.
Physical
Specify the level of redundancy required for example at network level,
redundancy check equipment level, or at specific locations.
Service Isolation & Isolation between internal and external traffic, as well as between
Security
different internal services. Measures deployed by the provider to protect
against the risks of interfering third parties (confidentiality, denial of
service, integrity of information). An EPU will usually have to regard a
Service Provider as untrusted and employ security techniques such as
encryption.
Access
Most EPUs have special rules for site access for security and safety
Arrangements
reasons. These need to be communicated to the Service Provider and
factored into his support of the service.
Qualified/
Ensure that the Service Provider has sufficient depth in its workforce
Certified/ Insured
with the right number of personnel in the right locations to ensure that
Workforce
response time guarantees are realistic. Ensure appropriate insurances are
in place to cover accidents by the Service Provider workforce when
attending an EPU site.
Performance
Meaningful and comprehensible information to be provided in a timely
Reports / Fault
fashion. An EPU should consider implementing their own monitoring
Notification
tools to ensure the performance of the Services is appropriate. This is
especially important for packet based services using different QOS
levels.

49

Figure 6.5 (continued) - SLA Checklist for EPU Procuring Telecom Connectivity Services
SLA Parameter
Description / Comments
Penalties and
While penalties may not compensate for loss of critical services, they do
Liability
focus a Service Providers attention on the need to accurately monitor
the SLA guarantees. Usually a Service Provider will exclude
responsibility for contingent liabilities and cap their overall liability to a
percentage rebate of fees paid. It is worth considering inserting a
termination clause in the SLA that allows termination of the service for
a sustained poor performance. At least this enables an EPU to engage a
new Service Provider and potentially fix the problem using a different
service if the current Service Provider continues not to remedy the
problem.
Other Legal
Depending on the structure of the contracts (e.g. if there is a separate
Conditions
service provision contract or not) there may be other legal conditions
that may need to be covered off in the SLA including details for;
confidentiality between the parties, intellectual property, compliance
with all applicable laws (and governing law where the service is
provided cross jurisdiction), acceptance and payment, Force Majeure
and Termination of contract provisions to name the most common ones.
Figure 6.7 titled Typical Communication Service Requirements for EPU Applications
provides a cross reference of typical service requirements for the EPU applications discussed in
Sections 3, 4 and 5. The reader should use Figure 6.6 to provide the meaning behind the
numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in Figure 6.7.

50

Figure 6.6 Constraint Severity Notation Criteria

1
2
Lowest Severity
Low Severity
Operational
Coverage

Control Centres &

Corporate Sites

Plants and stations

& Control Platform

Along the grid

(e.g. workforce)

Time Latency

1 5 sec
Human operator

0.1 1 sec

Few cycles
(20 - 100 msec)

4
Highest Severity
Beyond the grid,
(Energy farms,
customer sites, etc.)
Fraction of a cycle
( 5 20msec)

Time Predictability,
Delay Variation

Seconds

0.1 1 sec

10 100 msec

1 10 msec

May be through
different telecom
media
Few Hours

Uncontrolled over
the same telecom
system
Few Minutes

Controlled Routing

Identical path,
200s

Few Seconds

100 msec or less

99%
Service may be lost
in the event of
anomalies
Public
Lost data recovered
(Acknowledge &
Retransmission)

99.9%
Survives one
module or one link
failure
Un-trusted
Not so sensitive to
recurrent data error
& loss

99.99%

In Confidence

99.999%
Survives major
system faults &
disasters
Protected

Tolerates some data

loss

High data integrity

is critical

Sustainability,
Life-cycle Mgt.

Continuous upgrade
(type IT)

Yearly upgrade

Multi-annual upgrade
(Planned migration)

Constant over
application asset
lifetime

Environmental Class

Customer Premises
Admin Building
Control Centre

Power plant /
Substation (Control
& Relay Rooms)

Differential Delay
(go-return path)
Restoration Time
Availability
Service Survivability
& Resilience
Security Domain
Service Integrity

3
High Severity

51

Survives loss of one

node or few links

Grid corridors

Switch-yard
Hydraulic Structure

Time Latency

Delay Variation

Differential Delay

Restoration Time

Availability

Survivability

Security Domain

Service Integrity

Life-cycle Mgt.

Environment Class

3-4

System-wide Protection (WAP&C)

2-3

Remote substation control

2-3

Operational Telephony
SCADA RTU
Generation Control Signaling

2
2
2

2
2
2

2
2
1

2
2
1

3
3
3

2
2
2

3
2
2

4
4
4

2
3
4

3
3

2
2

Inter-control centre communication

Remote Operator
Synchrophasor visualization &
monitoring (WAMS)
Settlement and Reconciliation metering
Smart Metering

2
4

1
1

1
1

1
1

2
1

1
1

1
1

3
3

3
1

3
3

2
1

Operational Applications

Applications
Protection Communications
Current Differential
Protection Communications
State Comparison (command)

Requirements

Coverage

Figure 6.7 - Typical Communication Service Requirements for EPU Applications

52

Time Latency

Delay Variation

Differential Delay

Restoration Time

Availability

Survivability

Security Domain

Service Integrity

Life-cycle Mgt.

Environment class

1-2

1-2

Collaborative Multimedia Comms.

2-3

1-2

1-2

Automation Device Management

Substation Data Retrieval

2
2

1
1

1
1

2
1

2
1

1
1

2
1

4
4

3
1

3-4
1-2

2
2

On-line Documentation

3-4

Condition Monitoring
Video-surveillance of sites

2
2

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
3

3
3-4

1-2
2

3-4
3

2
4

Site Access Control

Environment Hazard Monitoring
Intruder Detection
Isolated Worker Safety
Public Warning Applications
Hydraulic Stress O&M
Cyber-security Applications

2
2
2
3
4
2
2

1
1
1
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
2

1
1
1
1
1
1
1

1
1
1
1
1
1
1

4
4
4
4
4
4
4

3-4
3-4
3-4
3-4
3-4
3-4
4

1
1
1
1
1
1
1

3
3
2-3
3
3
3
1-2

2
2
3-4
3-4
4
4
2

Applications
Mobile Workforce Communications

Requirements

Coverage

Security & Safety

Operation Support

Figure 6.7 (continued) - Typical Communication Service Requirements for EPU Applications

53

7 DISASTER RECOVERY AND SERVICE CONTINUITY

7.1 Introduction
Natural catastrophe and intentional disasters have considerably increased the awareness and
concern about the vulnerabilities of all critical national infrastructures including the power
delivery system. Disaster Recovery Planning is therefore being incorporated into the
organization of Electrical Power Utilities. The communication system being essential for the
re-establishment of the power system after any major disruption, it must be particularly robust,
geographically redundant, and tolerant to many anomalies in its constitution.
As a National Critical Infrastructure, the Utility is subject to state-specified obligations
assuring rapid recovery of the electrical power in case of major disasters.
The telecommunication facilities and services are required for the restoration of the electrical
power service through

the power system automation and control system

the communications of the Operation & Maintenance staff

The telecom infrastructure and service must therefore be conceived to:

1. Tolerate the loss of infrastructure in a node, in a link or in a region
2. Tolerate the loss of mains power supply for a relatively long duration
3. Redirect all substation communications (SCADA and voice) to a back-up Control Centre
when required (e.g. in case of destruction or major damage of the Control Centre)
4. Include fast deployment communication systems (e.g. radio, satellite) for implementing
temporary communication links and networks to replace the damaged or non-operating
facilities or to constitute temporary relays for the Utilitys restoration staff
5. Provide specific information exchange facilities for disaster warning, staff coordination
and recovery team communications.
Disaster Recovery is not a concept specific to telecommunications but a general plan covering
all aspects of the Electrical Power Utility. As such, if telecom assets, infrastructure and staff
are located within the perimeter of Utilitys premises, then they are integrated into the Utilitys
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan (DR/BCP). However, if telecommunication
services are provided by a different entity, with staff and assets at other sites, then the
coherence of the telecom Service Providers DR/BCP with that of the Utility must be assured
and periodically audited.

7.2 Threats and Risk Management and Risk Assessment

There are many different threats that can negatively impact the normal telecommunications
services operation. Before defining recovery requirements in case of threat occurrence, a risk
assessment is recommended. A risk assessment is a part of the global risk management process
of the EPU, and it aims to ensure that all risks faced by the EPU are appropriately identified,
understood and treated.

54

The decision making process for the risks treatment relies on information about the threats and
vulnerabilities that contribute to the likelihood of the risk occurring and the impact of its
occurrence, compared with the cost of mitigating the risk and the risk appetite of the EPU. A
considerable part of threats and vulnerabilities faced by EPUs are disasters, some common
include the following:

Natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, rainstorms, typhoon, snowstorm, etc);

Fire;
Power failure;
Terrorist attacks;
Organized or deliberate disruptions;
Theft;
Major system and/or equipment failures;
Human error;
Cyber attacks or computer viruses;
Legal issues;
Worker strikes.

Making the risk assessment, you will find out that telecommunications assets will have
different risks associated with them, and a correlation analysis of different risks is needed.
Some risks will impact many of the assets of a company, such as the risk of a massive fire
destroying a main building and everything on it, or an earthquake destroying a large amount of
power lines, while in other cases, like a flood in a data center, will only affect a group of assets.
Based on the generic risk management process model, a EPUs risk management framework
was developed as shown in Figure 7.1 [22].

Figure 7.1 EPU Risk Management and Risk Assessment Model [22]
RA: Risk Analysis, RM: Risk Management

55

The four layers in Figure 7.1 illustrate the various hierarchical levels of the operations part of a
typical EPU which operates power plants and/or electricity networks. Typically each level will
have authority over one or more entities in the level below. Therefore, the single corporate
entity will have authority for most business units, and each business unit will have
responsibility for one or more power plant and/or electricity network, etc.
As each level has authority over the entities in the level below, it will set certain business
objectives for them, and monitor the level of achievement of these business objectives. We can
use this same concept to elaborate how risk is assessed and managed within the corporate
structure of EPU operations.
Each level of the organization has a different set of objectives, and is therefore exposed to
different sets of risks. However, as there are dependencies between each level in terms of
objectives, there are also dependencies between each level in terms of risk. In order to take a
holistic approach to risk management, it is important that these dependencies are recognized,
and linked unambiguously through the use of a common framework or language for the
identification and management of risks.
At each level within the organization, Risk Assessment activities should take place, and this
should result in risks being quantified and Risk Treatment actions being taken to bring certain
identified risks down to acceptable levels (where they are not already at or below acceptable
levels).

7.3 Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan

It is recognized that having a Business Continuity Plan and a Disaster Recovery Plan is vital
for the organizations activities. In simple terms, the BCP/DRP are developed to help the
organizations keeping their business running, completely or partially, in case of disaster,
defining roles and action plans in the recovering process, so it can be made more rapidly and
efficiently.
There are some good reasons for having a BCP/DRP [23]:

Probability of disasters;
Business reliance on telecommunications;
Growing corporate and social responsibility;
Standardization movements.

As a part of the BCP, a good DRP for telecommunications is needed to ensure an effective
response to a disaster that affects telecommunications services and minimize the effect on the
business. The major goals of the DRP are:

Minimize interruptions to the normal operations.

Limit the extent of disruption and damage.
Minimize the economic impact of the interruption.
Establish alternative means of operation in advance.
Train personnel with emergency procedures.
Provide for smooth and rapid restoration of service.

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To achieve these goals, the most important factors that it shall take into account are:

Communication
o Personnel - Notify all key personnel for a certain problem and assign them tasks
focused toward the recovery plan;
o Customers - Notifying clients about problems minimizes panic.
Tools: Be sure that the plan includes the identification and access to all the tools needed
for the recovery, such as manuals, procedures, applications, devices, privileges, etc.
Backups: Backups should be stored in separate locations. If backup resources are taken
offsite, these need to be recalled. If you are using remote backup services, a network
connection to the remote backup location (or the Internet) will be required;
Facilities: Having backup sites (hot or cold) and mobile recovery facilities are also good
options;
Prepare your employees: during a disaster, employees are required to work longer, more
stressful hours, and a support system should be in place to alleviate some of the stress.
Prepare them ahead of time to ensure that work runs smoothly.
Testing the plan: provisions, directions, frequency for testing the plan should be stipulated

After identifying the potential impacts of disaster and to understand the risks and construct the
BCP plan itself, in order to realize business continuity, the BCP must be not only established
but also continually updated and maintained in a Plan, Do, Check and Act basis, to
ensure that it remains appropriate to the needs of the EPU in terms of covering the measures
and action plans to meet the Recovery Time Objective.

7.4 Project Design Criteria

Taking into account the importance of the telecommunication services in the EPU
environment, it is necessary to install flexible, safe and reliable communication systems that
can support the transmission of information with stability and non-alteration of the functioning
of the communication system along the time. Having such requirement in mind, it is important
to consider a set of global project design criteria for EPUs telecommunications services.

7.4.1 Back-up Facilities

One of the most important resources in business continuity is having backup facilities, mainly
for the operational services continuity, but also for end business units and corporate services in
case of Bulk Electric System (BES). Defining the backup facilities requirements implies,
knowing what services are essential, in how much time they shall be restored and for how
much time they will be needed. The following requirements shall be considered for backup
facilities implementations [Based on NERC Standard EOP-008-1 Loss of Control Center
Functionality]:

Select a safety location specially in terms of natural disasters risk that can be easily
accessed;
Be sure that all needed data will be present at the backup facilities in case of disaster,
through storage/database synchronous replication for the most critical information or
through tape restore for the less critical;

57

Include in the backup facilities all the tools and applications that allow visualization
capabilities that ensure that operating personnel have situational awareness of the BES,
and all those needed for the minimum business/corporate activities;
Assure all data and voice communications needed for the regular service operation,
including voice and control communications to the critical substations and power plants,
and to communicate outside the organization including Internet access;
Include reliable power sources such access to redundant distribution power lines, diesel
generators, diesel refill contracts, etc.;
Be sure that all the physical and cyber security requirements applied to the main facilities
and control centers are also guaranteed;
Implement an operating process for keeping the backup functionality consistent with the
primary control center.
Do not forget to assure food and medical first aid;

As all of the components of the BCP, the backup facility availability and functionality must be
tested in a regular basis. However, if cost effective, his usage as a hot site is recommended,
for example in a distributed processing architecture or under hot/standby or metro-cluster
architectures. Using backup facilities as a hot site can be very attractive in terms of
permanent updating and training, and providing easy redundancy even in non disaster events.

7.4.2 Power Supply Independence

An essential attribute of any operational telecommunication service is its continuity in case of
AC power interruption. Although traditional telecom Service Providers are equipped with
backup battery facilities, the dimensioning of the latter, associated to the significant rise in
traffic solicitation and therefore power consumption in disaster situations, may lead to the
unavailability of the vital communications of the Power system. The availability engagements
of Telecom Service Providers, as specified in SLAs, are often insufficient to cover this
essential requirement.
A dedicated infrastructure is generally composed of telecommunication assets located
exclusively (or essentially) inside the electrical sites (e.g. substations), many times equipped
with diesel electric generators. Its power supply and backup facilities are dedicated to the
Utilitys equipment (no unexpected load), are dimensioned according to Utility requirements,
and in general, common with the critical facilities that need to communicate: if there is power
for the RTU and Protection relay, then there is power for the associated communication
equipment.
Appendix A5 presents the results of a survey performed over some power utilities concerning
their dimensioning of power supply for telecom and data center facilities.

7.4.3 Network Redundancy

In some cases, having no communications, or having bandwidth constraints, during some
minutes or hours is not critical, but for most of the EPU operational services based on
telecommunications, like SCADA or voice, a few minutes is too much. It is important to
improve reliability and prompt recoverability of network system against damages, for which
the equipments like aerial optical cables are difficult to take measures or which is unexpected.

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Some of the most common redundancy measures adopted and combined building high-reliable
and high-available telecommunications networks are:

Duplicated equipments for the same purpose, sometimes form different vendors;
Equipments with redundant architectures in terms of power supply, CPU, service cards,
access ports, etc.
Physical independent communication media (e.g. optical fiber and radio);
Different communication technologies (e.g. SDH and PLC);
Alternative/Mesh network routes;
Distributed processing systems;
Third party telecommunication services;
Out of band management systems.

7.4.4 Countermeasures against Natural Disasters

As for many other issues, the better solution is prevention, reason why the following
countermeasures against natural disasters should be considered to decrease telecommunication
network outages [24]:

Selection of safety location in the planning stages;

The countermeasures in the planning stages of building networks are important to reduce
the risk of damages. Equipments and facilities for telecommunication should be located in
low-risk areas, and appropriate transmission medium should be selected. For example, we
check geological data from onsite survey and past record of disaster, then avoid high-risk
site of mudslide or liquefaction due to earthquakes. In addition, for important
communications we select high reliability medias such as microwave link or Optical
Ground Wire (OPGW) which have higher disaster resistant than aerial optical cable.

Design and manufacture disaster resistant equipment;

Equipments for telecommunication networks are designed to be highly quakeproof and
thunder resistant by the tough specifications. Therefore manufactured equipments are
impervious to damage. In the case of microwave radio equipment, they have to pass the
impulse withstand voltage and sine wave vibration near the natural frequency tests.
During the vibration test, any bit error is not acceptable. Therefore the equipments are
required to have high stiffness.

Disaster resistant installation of equipment

Appropriate installations of equipment improve disaster resistance. The examples of
installation method, which improve disaster-resisting capacity, are below:
o Earthquake-proof

Bolt top and bottom of equipment strongly or install equipment into earthquake-proof
frame to prevents the equipments deformation by vibration;

Install flexible waveguide into connection between rectangular waveguides and
wireless equipment to absorb vibration.
o Lightning-resistant

Adopt a meshed earthing system for site to provide a low impedance path to earth;

Potential equalization by connect grounding wires

Equipment layout to avoid surge attack

Adopt Surge Protective Device (SPD) to protect equipments from surges
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7.5 Enhancing the emergency response capacity

Considering the measures for strengthening emergency response management of power
communication network, and enhancing the emergency response capacity of power
communication network, not only will reduce de service damage in case of disaster, but will
enable to provide a more efficient and fast recovery process. Some of the most important
measures are listed as follows [25]:
a. Improve contingent plan for power communication under various categories and at
various levels

The entities at various levels shall formulate contingent plans for different disasters to ensure
the avoidance of interruption of power lines or fast recovery of the interrupted power lines and
guarantee the safety and stability of power network.
b. Prioritize

Knowing which services are more important for the business continuity, for example
dispatching telephone or SCADA, and designing the network and recovery plans based on such
priorities, will help to get a fast and more successful recovering process.
c. Strengthen the integration, storage and sharing of emergency response resources

Emergency response resources include internal resources of the entities, power industry, public
communication network, various domestic trade organizations, public security services, and
relevant international organizations.
Integrate all resources available for use and improve the efficiency of interlinking between
public network and other special communication systems. Given public network and special
power communication networks are highly complementary in terms of the laying mode,
vigorous efforts should be made to cooperate with public network operators and other special
network operators to study contingent plans and sign relevant agreements with them to make
public network serve as one of ways for power communication emergency response system.
Energetically endeavour, in conjunction with public network operators, back upping, protecting
each other, supplying power lines each other to establish one independently functioning
hardware platform with sufficient competition and effective integration in case of emergency
as well as intercommunication and interlinking and set up emergency response joint-action
mechanism for resource sharing.
Intensify efforts in the work on the establishment and storage of emergency response materials
and devices to deal with disasters. List important materials, equipment name, model, storage
places and telephone are for contact necessary for emergency response in contingent plan and
relevant management rules.
d. Emergency response talent team

Optimize maintenance system and set up maintenance talent team for fast response to reduce
business interruption time.
Foster technically sophisticated maintenance team and launch enhanced training on technology
and process among maintenance personnel to mitigate operation accidents and reduce fault
location time.

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e. Adjust planning and improve communication network structure

Enhance OPGW or ADSS cables capacity of resisting disasters in terms of design standard,
laying mode and coverage density on the basis of rational technical and economic
comparisons.
Multiple communication modes are available. Besides the existing OPGW, ADSS and carrier
wave, underground optical cable, microwave and satellite communication are also added to
enable three-dimensional and diversified communication network.
Conduct scientific evaluation and rationally select location, improve the quality of construction
of communication facilities and tighten its standard and enhance the capacity of resisting
natural disasters; arrange equipment room, base station, transmission route in a unified and
rational manner to ensure multi-route and multi-mode feature of communication network and
avoid damage.
Reduce the length of transmission path and the number of transmission nodes and replace
back-to-back switching with high-capacity equipment.
f.

Adopt network deployment method for improving the usability of network

Enhance networks protection capacity to mitigate the impact from interruption of optical fiber
or node failure, and replace large-loop network deployment by small-loop-plus-small-loop
network deployment mode to mitigate the impact from interruption of optical fiber.
g. Adopt technologies with less risk of failure

The most unpredictable disasters and sometimes the most devastators are the natural ones.
Adopting also technologies that, at least in theory, are less dependent on physical
infrastructures damages, can be an effective way to improve virtual communications loss
immunity and faster recovery periods. Examples of such technologies are mobile radio and
satellite applications.
h. Invest on disaster recovery support systems to improve time response

Develop and implement disaster recovery support systems based on the concept that his
introduction will enable rapid understanding of damage status, online information sharing
through centralized management of the statuses of damage, planning and mobilization, and
providing information to customers, relevant government offices and other entities outside the
company. Having this kind of recovery support systems will end in the acceleration of recovery
plan.

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7.6 Disaster Information Systems

A Disaster Information System allows the Utility to acquire accurate information across the
network in order to mitigate damage from disasters. Adopting this kind of systems will provide
an efficient way to communicate directives and other types of information between different
business locations and check the result of communication in the event of a large-scale disaster.
These systems ensure prompt information conveyance between the disaster counter measures
headquarters to be established in the headquarters and branch offices. These systems including
the system currently under construction are using IP networks.
Kyushu Electric Power Company in Japan has implemented such a Disaster Information
System in which meteorological information is transmitted to the Telecommunication Centre
which feeds different Counter-measure Departments undertaking inspection and reporting
tasks and consequently to take appropriate restoration measures. The system is based on an IP
data network using the fixed infrastructure with a high degree of routing resiliency. Emergency
radio and satellite communications and effective PDA mobile terminals also play important
roles. The system collects accurate information on the disaster, which is provided to regions
and mass media and helps to work to the recovery from disaster damages.

Figure 7.2 Kyushu Electric Power Company Disaster Information System [14]
Having disaster recovery support systems using mobile devices to receive inspection
instructions, enables the recovery staff to have access to an online view of damage status and
facilitates formulation of recovery plans.

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In Poland, a system called PERUN is in use at the PSE-Operator (Polish Power GridOperator). It collects and displays the information about lightning which is sent from the
Weather Institute (Meteorology and Water Economy Institute IMiGW). The information is
refreshed every 10 minutes using FTP protocol. Communication is through fixed, point-topoint links and is protected against intruders.
PERUN operates with two METEO-FTP servers in cluster. The main one is in the Control
Centre and the second in the Back-up Control Centre. The software program RAPOK enables
to view the lightning data on the country map using different scales.
Up to 5 local computer stations can be connected to the system which runs separately from the
real time systems and no data from PERUN is transmitted to other systems.
To summarize the storm information service is a stand alone supportive service for dispatchers,
which provides aggregated 10 min. snapshots about the lightning fronts.
The usage of disaster information systems enables the processing of a high volume of fault
information, and prompt collection of service-interruption information, making possible to
accelerate recovery in areas hit by power outages during emergencies or disasters, and quickly
provide service-interruption information to customers, government bodies and other relevant
entities outside the Utility in large-scale disasters.

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8 TELECOM SERVICE DELIVERY MODELS

8.1 Introduction
Electrical Power Utilities (EPU) provision their required telecom services through different
schemes and models depending upon several factors and business drivers some of which are
listed below:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

Commercial availability and cost of adequate telecom services,

Number and dispersion of sites to cover and their communication traffic
Company policy and regulatory issues concerning CAPEX and OPEX,
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity and Security constraints
Company policy and regulatory position on the provision of revenue generating
commercial telecom services and the opportunity to recover investments through nonoperational telecom services (e.g. recovering the cost of optical fibre infrastructure through
leasing of dark fibres)
f. Organizational issues including in-house availability of skilled staff
At a first glance, there seems to be as many operating schemes as EPUs. However, further
analysis lets us extract some common attributes in order to identify a number of common
patterns in the industry, explaining the reasons behind each, their limitations, and their domain
of validity.
The analysis is based on 3 principal axes:
The primary mission of the telecom Service User (i.e. EPUs role or mission)
Telecom assets ownership
Telecom Service Providers relationship with the Service User

8.2 EPU Profiles - Telecom Service Users

Over the last 20-25 years, the EPU has undergone significant organization change, largely
influenced and driven by political and legislative policy. In many parts of the world, a main
strategic goal has been to move away from the Vertically Integrated Utility (VIU), a usually
government owned monopolistic organization to create a competitive electricity market. This
requires the unbundling of monopoly activities such as transmission and distribution and
placing them into a regulated environment, whilst creating a commercially competitive
environment for generation and supply activities. Differing national constraints lead to
considerable variations from country to country in the structure of the competitive electricity
market.

Figure 8.1 Electricity Market Evolution

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In Europe, the necessity to create a single electricity market determined new rules in the
organization of electrical business, the most important being by far the implementation of the
transmission system operator entity (TSO) in charge with the operation of transmission grids,
acting completely separated from generation and supply companies.

In case where the company owning a transmission system is part of a vertically integrated
group, there are two options: ownership unbundling or, only in exceptional cases subject to
the status of the company at a fixed deadline (September 3rd 2009) [26, 27], a right to set
up the system operator independent from supply and generation interests and strictly
monitored by the national regulator. The ownership unbundling model is that the
electricity transmission network is operated and owned by one independent from supply
and generation interests company, which reveals and undertakes the incentives,
responsibilities and liabilities for the network.

If the transmission network belongs to a vertically integrated company, then transmission

network operators have to be effectively separated from supply and generation activities
without ownership unbundling. This model would enable companies to retain ownership of
transmission networks provided that the networks were operated by a new independent
transmission network operator.

An overview on a present landscape of transmission and/or system operation entities is

showing a large diversity of the adopted solutions, as follows:

Independent system operator model, where the system operator does not own the
transmission assets but is ownership unbundled from the rest of the system, as e.g. in US.

Independent transmission system operator, fully unbundled from the rest of the system
which owns and operates transmission assets. This is the case of the majority of European
countries

Legally unbundled transmission system operator, unbundled from the rest of system which
owns and operates transmission assets. This model meets the EU requirements and can
involve effective separation of transmission operation from the rest of the sector while
transmission assets remain under the same ownership as generation or retail. e.g. France

A hybrid model where both the independent system operator and the transmission
operation are ownership unbundled from the rest of the system. The independent system
operator is asset-light, while the transmission operation has no system operation function.
This is the case in electricity market in Chile and Argentina.

A system and/or transmission entity embedded in the vertically integrated utility, e.g.
traditional utilities in Europe. This is the model that Europe has sought to move away from
in successive directives; however it is still in de facto operation in some European
electricity markets.

As it can be seen, the most sensitive case in the new market organization, still in discussion in
many countries, especially in countries with large and dominant vertically integrated

65

companies, is the setup of this monopoly manager that means a TSO with/without assets, but
unbundled from generation and supply.
This is why all the efforts of EU Community are still concentrated to find optimal compromise
to convince even not yet convinced giants to accept a kind of legally unbundling (see third
bullet above).
A detailed description of ownership unbundling issues and the underlying reasons and
regulations is beyond the scope of the present document and can be found for example in [28].
Similarly, in the Distribution domain, unbundling is in progress resulting in the separation of
operation from supply (in practice this is monitored by national regulators). In the European
case, following EU Directives [26], the independent DSO ought to be established by July 2007.
Connecting these afore mentioned forms of EPU organizations with Telecom Service Provider
profiles described in section 8.4, one can conclude that:

Type A is common for all forms of EPUs

Type B could be common for TSOs (independent and legal unbundled models), as well as
for vertically integrated companies

Type C for independent and legal unbundled TSOs only

Type D for independent TSOs only

Type E is commonly used in ISOs and Distribution Companies

Consequently, the term Electrical Power Utility covers at present a wide range of organizations
whose telecom service requirements and dispersion of sites lead to different service
provisioning models: Transmission System Operators (TSO), Regional or National System
Operators, Energy Market Operators, Transmission Companies, Distribution Companies,
Generation Companies, Regulators and Service Contracting Companies, etc.
Further consolidation within the industry has seen acquisitions and mergers take place, creating
large national or multi-national utilities which operate various business activities within a
complex regulated and un-regulated environment and in this respect assuming several utility
roles. The communication requirements and attributes of the company shall therefore be the
sum of those for each utility mission.
Something that the resulting EPUs have in common is that they have to operate as an enterprise
organization, and as such are accountable to a variety of stakeholders including:
Parent Company and Investors
Customers
Regulators
Partners and providers.
This accountability aspect is of great importance when analyzing telecommunication
management issues, and in particular the upstream tasks of policy definition and business
planning (refer to section 10.4.2).
Different Utility roles in terms of their respective attributes and specificities as telecom Service
Users are presented in this section and summarized in Figure 8.2.

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Figure 8.2 Utility Roles as perceived from the communications point of view
Role of Utility
Sites
Communication Services &
Applications
National or
Connect to Control EMS/SCADA, WAMS and Voice
Regional
Facilities (tens)
facilities around the National Load
Coordinating or dispersed across a
Dispatch Centre and connection to
Operating Body country or a region
Control Centres and Back-up
with little or no
facilities for Transmission Grid
power network
companies, large generators
assets (e.g. USand distribution companies,
type ISO)
Administrative facilities
Market participants and Energy
Trading platforms
Transmission
HV substations and Protection relaying
Grids, TSO and
transmission lines
Security monitoring of
other entities
10s to few 100s of
installations/assets
operating
sites dispersed
Condition monitoring of assets
transmission
across the country
HV metering for Settlement
network assets
or a large region
EMS/SCADA, WAMS and Voice
facilities around the Control Centre
and connection to
Grid substations,
Other CCs, Back-up facilities,
Power Plants,
Operation Support sites
Administrative facilities
Market participants and energy
trading platform (TSO)
Distribution
Distribution
Distribution Automation
Grid / Energy
Automation:
Demand Side Management
Retail Supply /
1000s of sites
Market communications
Dispersed
HV metering for Settlement
Generation
Demand Side
Asset monitoring & supervision
Management /
(transformers, overhead and cabinSmart Metering :
based switches, MV lines, etc.)
100s of thousands
Demand Side Management /
Smart Metering
Connection to Administrative
facilities
Security monitoring of installations
and assets
Generation
Small number of
Intra-plant & Inter-plant
Utility
sites
Between the plant and the Control
(HPP, TPP,
Centre
Energy Farms,
Communications of the associated
etc.)
HV substation
Market communications

67

Specificities

Based exclusively on third

party telecoms

Extensively based on
dedicated telecom networks
using mainly optical fibres

Third party, Radio, and some

dedicated network based on
pole mounted and u/g fiber,
microwave, etc.
Very large number of sites

HPP and Windfarm often in

isolated areas may be a driver
for dedicated facilities
TPP may be in more telecom
accessible areas with both
public and transmission grid
telecom network

8.2.1 Coordinating or Operating Bodies without Network Assets

These Utilities play a role of global coordination across multiple power systems assuring the
global reliability of the system and the security of the power supply process but have no proper
power assets (e.g. US-type ISOs). They may cover in their system model thousands of
generating units, and hundreds of thousands of grid telemetry data points. However, from a
communication point of view, they only communicate to some tens of EPU Control Centres and
to some major power plants.
System Operators with no transmission assets may use the telecommunication infrastructure of
coordinated power utilities whose power systems they dispatch, or third party telecom services.
The communication is mainly performed using Inter-Control Centre Protocol (ICCP) through an
external Telecom Service Provider using IP VPNs or other procured telecom service. Two
independent Service Providers may be employed in order to enhance service reliability.
It should be noted that these bodies having no proper power system assets, they do not have
Protection applications and often do not need any SCADA. A communication interruption with
one or some nodes for a few minutes has therefore less impact on the operation of the system
other than possibly lower precision or visibility, as the nodes data can be estimated (possibly
with less precision) through calculation.
It is very important to assure, on the other hand, very high service survivability and fault
tolerance for the Data/Control Centre and its stored information. This is attained through a
geographically distinct Back-up Data/Control Centre and reliable Disaster Recovery/Business
Continuity solutions. Large capacity, reliable interconnection links are required for database
synchronization and hot-standby between the main and back-up data/control centres. This is
often implemented through a duplicated Ethernet link through one or two distinct Service
Providers. Voice, computer networking and video facilities are also often implemented between
the different facilities and may be interconnected to other EPU control centres as well as to other
coordinating, regulating and operating centres.
The ISO generally has little or no telecom infrastructure but may have extensive data network
assets (router, switch, cyber-security barriers and intrusion detection, communication servers,
etc.) which is considered as part of its IT platform and managed through its IT management
facilities.
In certain countries, the National or Regional System Operator (or Coordination Centre) may
have a role of operation and control over some power assets which are used by multiple State
Utilities (e.g. interconnection links or very large generation facilities). In this case, the
corresponding communication requirements and attributes are those of other asset operating
utilities described in the following sections. The employed telecommunication infrastructure may
be that of the connected Utilities up to a varying level (fibre, transmission, or data network
level).
Similarly, for the European-type system operators, where the operating entity owns, has in long
term concession, or operates transmission grid assets, the supplementary communication
requirements are those of the following section on transmission grids.

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8.2.2 Transmission System Operator (TSO) or Transmission Utility

A TSO is a system operator that owns, or has in concession, the totality or part of the HV power
transmission network assets. Transmission grid companies and TSOs have control of the HV
transmission lines interconnecting the great majority of their sites, impacting considerably their
telecom provision model. They generally own the most extensive dedicated telecom
infrastructures among EPUs. This fact can be explained through a number of factors as listed
below:
A large number of power system sites (often few hundreds) dispersed across a large
geographical area (often a whole country or a large region) interconnected through HV
transmission lines,
A network-wide coverage, meshed right-of-way through their HV overhead transmission
lines that can support optical fibers at relatively low extra cost, and arriving directly into the
power sites where communication is required (without any last mile issue), in addition to
the possibility of transmitting smaller amounts of information on the overhead HV line
conductors (PLC) or on pilot wires accompanying underground power cables.
Some highly critical communication requirements which cannot be easily met by other
telecom Service Providers (e.g. Protection Relay communications),
A great diversity of operation-related critical communication requirements as described in
previous sections, with a rapidly growing required bandwidth due to the distributed
intelligence of the network, monitoring and maintenance of the power assets, and
geographically dispersed workforce.
In the great majority of Transmission Utilities (or their vertically integrated predecessor),
operational telecommunication has been historically deployed through dedicated networks
owned and controlled by the utility mainly due to the inability of the telecom operators to
provide the required services. The infrastructure was originally based on PLC and copper pilot
wires with possibly some microwave radio on larger traffic segments. Administrative
communications, on the other side, were often provided through the public operator.
The transmission lines right-of-way and the installation of high capacity optical fiber have
greatly impacted the transmission EPUs telecom organization:

The relatively large capacity of the installed fiber has lead to the integration of EPU
Corporate communication services. This integration has often transformed the operational
telecom entity into a separate Telecom Service Provider entity, serving both operationrelated and corporate services. The separation of the telecom entity from the power system
operations has often resulted in some boundary uncertainties, migration (and/or loss) of
technical skills and misunderstandings on requirements (e.g. in the domain of protection
communications). The previously informal relationship between telecom and electrical
engineering in the substation environment generally evolves into in a more formal user to
provider relationship based on explicit specifications and SLAs. On the other hand, the
ICT staff moving from a department inside the EPU in charge of a support activity to a
separate telecom entity (i.e. a core activity), get higher responsibility, more value and
more incentives for their quality of accomplished work.
The extensive Right-of-way and/or extra fibre capacity in the cables, in conjunction with
telecom deregulation, lead many Transmission Utilities into the provision of commercial
telecommunication services to varying extents. This evolution has had further important
impacts on the provision of operation-related services as discussed in a separate section.

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8.2.3 Distribution Utility

Distribution is probably the utility domain with the greatest diversity in EPU perimeter, size
and organization. It covers the technical operation of the MV and LV infrastructures but also
customer related activities such as the metering and billing of a large number of domestic and
industrial consumers, customer call centres and commercial agencies. It increasingly covers
technical and commercial issues related to the connection of small independent generators and
energy producing consumer (individual wind and solar generators). In many cases, the
distribution utility also covers the low level HV network in which case it has some
transmission grid type communication requirements. On the other hand, in some cases,
customer relation activities such as metering, billing and contract management are performed
by separate Energy Retailers. In some countries, Metering Utilities are being formed to
carry out customer premises communication access for multiple utilities.
In terms of telecom service provision model, the distribution utility communications can be
divided into the following segments:
a) HV Feeder Substations (HV/MV) These sites, when controlled by the distribution utility
have similar attributes and requirements as the transmission grid as described above (e.g.
teleprotection, SCADA, voice, etc.). Their communications are generally performed
through dedicated optical fibre networks, microwave or procured services (e.g. E1/T1, IP
VPN, etc.)
b) MV Asset sites (MV breakers, MV/LV transformers, etc.) Remote operation of MV
switches is the basis for the distribution network automation and network fault isolation. It
is therefore important that the communication service remains operational during a power
outage and capable of facing information avalanche situations when major disturbances
occur in one region. Monitoring services (e.g. MV/LV transformers and site monitoring,
site access control) can be performed through dedicated or procured services. Due to the
very large number of sites, communications are often provided with an opportunistic
approach, using whatever communications are available for other applications in any
particular environment (e.g. dense urban area, residential suburban, industrial zone, rural,
etc.). Dedicated radio networks, MV PLC, VSAT, public cellular voice and data service,
PSTN, or public internet are some of the manners the required telecom services are
provisioned. The deployment of Smart grid solutions is changing the communication
requirements at MV/LV level leading to specific infrastructures at a very large scale
moving telecommunication services nearer to the producer/consumer (Prosumer)
c) Customer Premises Communicating to the customer premises requires extremely low
cost of implementation per customer. Procured service versus dedicated radio or PLC is a
subject of discussion, experimentation and pilot projects in many distribution utilities at
the time this report is being prepared. The concept of smart metering and bi-directional
communications between the network and the energy consumer is one of the cornerstones
of the future power system and a major driver for future communication systems in the
distribution utility. This may leverage the other operation-related communication
requirements (e.g. MV monitoring and control).

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d) Commercial Service Agencies Communications between commercial offices, the billing

centre and the distribution control centre are beyond the scope of the present document.
However, implementing a dedicated backhaul communication infrastructure for
distribution SCADA and metering, often provides the opportunity to fulfil these high
traffic requirements.
e) Mobile Workforce Communication from control centres to mobile staff is particularly
important in distribution utilities because of the far greater proportion of unmanned
facilities. The service provisioning model is both dedicated or shared trunk mobile
networks (e.g. TETRA) and public cellular mobile services. The first case provides the
required reliability and availability in emergency situations where the service is most
required (e.g. extensive power outage) but at a high cost of implementation. The second,
on the other hand, provides a far less costly solution with more advanced functionalities
(data services, e-mail, on-line applications, etc.) with frequent updates and service
enhancements, but not necessarily available in major emergencies due to disaster
situations. Ideally, the distribution staff would need public mobile service in day-to-day
operation and a dedicated radio system for disaster recovery [11].

8.2.4 Generation Utility

In terms of communication attributes, Power Generation Utilities are the exact opposite to
Distribution Utilities. Their communications are concentrated on very few sites, which may be
either in a very accessible or a very inaccessible site. Typically, thermal power plants (TPP) are
often implemented in industrial zones in the proximity of urban centres (near to the
consumption load) where communication services can easily be procured. On the other hand,
hydroelectric power plants and windfarms are located in isolated areas (near to the energy
source) where it is often impossible to purchase communication services from
telecommunication carriers.
Another major difference between Generation Utilities and Transmission/Distribution Utilities
is that each generation plant is by itself the complete process: the great majority of operationrelated applications have all their constituents and their corresponding staff in the same site
resulting in extensive intra-plant communications. This means mainly local networking in
thermal plants and relatively short range communications (few km) over a hydroelectric
complex.
Renewable energy production covers large Energy Farms (e.g. wind farms) on one side and
small green power producers (individual wind turbines, micro hydro generators spread along
river beds, solar cells on the roof, bio-based generation, etc.). The required communications
and the impact on the telecom service delivery are very different.

Large Wind Farms (e.g. greater than 30 MW in Australia), like other large generation
plants, must provide SCADA data to the System Operator who may also require to
perform set-point Generation Control, that is to say, to reduce the generation when
required. As mentioned previously large wind farms, either land-based or off-shore, are
often located outside the coverage of public telecom Service Providers. The transmission
utilitys telecom network must therefore extend for an access to these generation plants.
The cost of communication access is part of the connection cost of the transmission lines

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to the Wind Farm. Communications from the remotely located control and surveillance
platform is performed via an often unmanned communications hut connected locally to
each wind generator unit. Wind farm communications include local automation, SCADA,
metering, different monitoring and surveillance applications, voice access in off-shore
wind turbines and in collecting and transforming substations as well as wireless facilities
for operation & maintenance staff. Optical fibres are often used in off-shore systems with
microwave radio as a backup between the off-shore and on-shore facilities.
Small green power generators and producing consumers on the other hand, generally
inject power into the rural MV distribution network. Remote communication to these
installations is generally covered by the Smart Metering system which in particular
includes remote disconnection functionality (e.g. for distribution network maintenance),
status monitoring and frequently refreshed metering data. Many different service delivery
modes have been used across distribution utilities ranging from procured services (e.g.
cellular data services, wired internet or switched telephone network) to light dedicated
communication links (e.g. UHF radio, VSAT and broadband wireless data). Further
communications may be required in the future perspective of Microgrids. The impact of
these generators on the telecommunication delivery pattern is to be considered as a further
attribute for Distribution Utilities.

Typical telecom service provision model for generation plants can therefore be as follows:

Dedicated telecommunication facilities inside the plant covering automation applications,

SCADA, monitoring applications, voice and computer networking services. Depending on
the type of power plant, this may range from a LAN environment to a few km Campus
Network.

External communications services through the transmission grid network (using the power
plants grid substation), or an access link to the transmission grid network, either dedicated
or procured from telecom operator. Power Generation Utilities constitute natural
customers for U-Telco communication services.

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8.3 Telecom Asset Ownership Profiles

8.3.1 Introduction
Ownership of major telecom assets is a determining factor in the EPUs adoption of a telecom
service delivery model, and on the EPUs degree of control over its operation-related
communications.
Telecom assets in the EPU can be broadly classified into the following types:

Physical layer assets Optical fibre, OHL right-of-ways, cable trays, RF towers,
frequencies

Transport network assets All electronic equipment used for the core transport of
information. We purposely separate the assets for the bulk transport of information from
those used for multiplexing and interfacing of individual applications which constitutes an
edge or a distribution layer, even if in technological reality these two layers can at times
be merged together and therefore render difficult the separation of their assets ownership.

Application service network and platform assets all specific systems delivering
particular communication services through the core transport capacity (e.g. low capacity
access multiplexing, Voice network, Teleprotection signalling, SCADA communication
network, etc.)

We classify ownership patterns into three broad categories:

Assets owned by the Service User (the operational entity in the EPU)
Assets owned by the Service Provider (whatever be its relationship with the user)
Assets owned by another party (e.g. state-owned fibre, fibre leased from another provider,
fibre, equipment or bandwidth belonging to another utility, etc.)

This section analyses some specificities in each case. Ownership criteria and issues for some
common telecom assets as described in the section are summarized below:
Asset Layer
Physical Layer Assets

Asset Types
Optical Fibre
Conduits, Rights-of-way
RF Towers, Repeater Housing
Radio Spectrum and Licenses
Long Term Contracts
Bulk Data Transfer Connections
Core Network Infrastructure
Narrowband Telecom Links (PLC,
Radio, etc.)

Transport Layer Assets

Application Layer Assets

Service Multiplexing
Teleprotection Signalling
Voice and Data Servers
LAN/WAN Assets
Surveillance Systems, Platforms

Ownership Criteria & Issues

HV Transmission Lines
Civil Works & Access Rights
Suitable Premises
Regulatory Constraints
Legal Constraints
Cost of Ownership
Bandwidth Requirement
Lifecycle Issues & Upgrades
Required Level of Control
Availability of Expertise & Skills
Critical Applications Coupling
Cost of Ownership
IT Lifecycle Issues & Upgrades
Availability of Expertise & Skills

Figure 8.3 Utilities Telecom Asset Ownership

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8.3.2 Physical layer assets

By physical layer assets, we understand those telecommunication assets that allow setting up
physical connectivity between the communication sites.
Fibre, Cable, Right-of-way

The most determining physical asset is the optical fibre. It can by its own lead an EPU to a
particular mode of service provision or prevent an EPU from adopting a particular mode.
Installing optical fibre cables between communication sites of the EPU necessitates Right-ofway, that is to say underground or overhead corridors where the cable can be laid. This is a
very precious asset that Transmission Utilities own due to their HV transmission lines.
Optical fibre infrastructure can be provisioned by the EPU through one of the following
manners:
1. Procure and install fibre cables through the EPUs right-of-way corridors (overhead
power lines, underground power cables, etc.). This is by far the most used scheme in
Transmission Utilities, and in Distribution Utilities owning HV lines. Spare capacity can
be used for corporate and other communication services and spare fibres can be leased to
external users for covering costs or for extra revenue. Possession of extra fibres may lead
the EPU into building a U-Telco activity.
2. Jointly financed procure and install This scheme is typically employed at the
interconnection between two EPUs, e.g. transmission line interconnecting two
transmission utilities
3. Fibre (or service) in exchange of right-of-way The EPU fibre requirement being far
lower than the capacity of an OPGW, it can grant a telecom carrier the right to draw
multi-fibre OPGW cables in exchange of its required fibres in those cables. However, this
scheme presents many issues concerning the maintenance of the OPGW which is
intimately related to the maintenance of the transmission line. Even if often envisaged
(e.g. for immediate availability of financing when a sizable fibre infrastructure is needed),
it often evolves into case 1 with leasing of extra capacity. However, where the telecom
entity of the EPU moves away into commercial service and becomes a distinct company,
it may inherit the fibres and consequently the EPUs right-of-way through a long term
leasing contract, in exchange of fibres or services left to the EPU.
4. Swap with other fibre asset owner This is typically used for providing route
redundancy where the networks topology does not provide the required resilience. The
other asset owner can be another utility, a telecom carrier, etc. Access from the fibre asset
owner to the EPU site may be an important issue. It should be noted that these swapping
schemes may raise regulatory issues regarding the non-payment of taxes and duties.
5. Lease fibres in another EPUs cables This scheme is often employed at sites where a
smaller footprint EPU connects to a more extended EPU. Some typical examples are:
o generation plant using transmission utility fibres at the transmission grid
substation,
o distribution utility access to a national facility using transmission utility fibres

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It can also be used to close a partially open telecommunication ring using assets belonging
to a regional footprint utility. Dark fibres (rather than transmission links) are leased when
the distances are sufficiently short to avoid intermediate regeneration and when high
capacity is required (e.g. Giga Ethernet). Fibre leasing from another EPU is generally
performed at co-located sites and therefore avoids the last mile issue encountered in
other leasing schemes.
6. Lease from a fibre asset owner This is the typical situation for EPUs that require a
high degree of control over their telecommunication network but do not have the
necessary right-of-way (or the initial capital investment) for installing their own fibres.
Optical cables over transmission lines may also be in the state public property as part of the
line conductor in case of OPGW, but conceded to the TSO or to the Telecom Service Provider
entity of the power utility for its internal usage. This type of long term concession in general
does not authorize the entity to which the cable is conceded to lease dark fibres.
Using leased fibre from an asset owner other than another EPU, raises several important issues
that need to be considered:
a) The topology of the resulting physical network depends upon the fibre owners network
structures leading to far longer than necessary links and often far from optimal overall
network.
b) Last Mile issue the distance from the fibre asset owner access point to the EPU
premises, even if relatively short, needs right-of-way and non-negligible civil works
inducing important cost and delay consequences.
c) Physical routing issue The design of a fault tolerant transmission network is based on
the knowledge of physical medium routing which is controlled by the fibre asset owner. In
particular, where fault tolerance is concerned, the two routes must not pass into any
common nodes, cables or conduits. In the event of incorrect routing information or
cable route changes, the fault tolerance of the whole system may be unacceptably
compromised. The EPU has no other way than the providers word to keep track of
changes or of the correctness of the routing information. Moreover, it is particularly hard
to obtain two independent cable routes from the EPU premises to the cable providers
meshed network (and not the providers access point).
d) Maintenance works EPU need to have control of maintenance schedules which is not
the same thing as being informed of the date of maintenance works. A multi-customer
fiber provider cannot program his works according to EPU requirements. In case of
interruption, of its fibres, the EPU requires immediate repair which may lead to unscheduled interruption of other fibre users without prior notice. However, in case of other
users fibre interruption, the EPU cannot accept non-anticipated maintenance works. A
very non-symmetrical contract in general unacceptable to the provider is needed.
e) Cable reliability The majority of fibre providers have underground cable infrastructures,
particularly subject to cable cuts due to civil works, while overhead OPGW normally used
by the EPU is almost invulnerable. The extremely high levels of service availability
required by EPU operation-related applications are very difficult to meet with the
probability of cable cut that can be obtained from cable providers. (when using OPGW,

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cable availability can be neglected in comparison to equipment availability, with leased

underground cable we have the reverse situation).
f) Multiplying the cable providers in order to meet the necessary coverage of the EPU shall
multiply the formerly mentioned issues and creates additionally an important issue of
governance and contract management with several contractors/sub-contractors in some
cases along one same connection.
RF Physical Layer Assets

Another important category of physical layer assets in the EPU are those related to
implementing radio transmission networks and links. We add here repeater housing even if this
can also apply to optical regenerator housing:
RF Towers in HV substation premises and power plant sites, including tower lighting and its
associated power supply, are generally the property of the EPU. These towers as well as other
EPU structures which can serve as antenna support (e.g. electrical poles, power plant tower
structures, etc.) may also be used by other radio network infrastructure owners such as cellular
radio operators as a source of extra revenue for the EPU. Antenna support outside EPU
premises (e.g. microwave repeater or radio base stations) can be through co-location on towers
belonging to other radio networks. In particular when a wide zone coverage is required (e.g.
UHF data systems, mobile trunk systems, etc.), the optimal location of radio relays for
covering a given zone is often the same for all radio infrastructures, facilitating co-location.
Repeater housing, including air-conditioning facilities and repeater power supply can be the
property of the EPU, its telecom Service Provider, or leased from an external party. Microwave
link repeaters are often located on EPU premises in which case, they are generally EPU assets.
UHF and other zone coverage base stations on the other hand, are often on high sites, and may
be in shared housing leased from another asset owner or telecom Service Provider. The
maintenance of the facilities, in this case, is generally provided by the owner as an external
service to the EPU. When using externally provided power supply for radio relays, the
autonomy of the power supply and the dimensioning of batteries is an important issue for
operation during power outages.
Frequency licences with narrow directivity (e.g. microwave radio links) and narrow bandwidth
(UHF radio for SCADA or few channel mobile systems) are generally applied for under the
name of the EPU user and are therefore part of its assets. Licensed broadband spectrum with
wide coverage, on the other hand, cannot be allocated in many countries for the exclusive
usage of the EPU internal communications. It is, in this case, common to obtain shared usage
with other Utilities (e.g. gas, water, other EPU) or other critical services. This is normally
performed through procurement of services from a specialized operator, or setting up a service
that can be procured by other users. This latter case generally results in the separation of the
Service Provider entity from the EPU operational entity.
Power Line Carrier Narrow-band PLC whether HV, MV or LV is generally a dedicated asset
for a particular Utility application (Protection, voice and SCADA in HV, device monitoring
and metering for MV/LV). The physical coupling assets consisting of line traps, coupling
capacitors, Line Matching Units and the frequency spectrum assets, are indeed the property of
the EPU operational user. Particular attention has to be paid to the maintenance of these assets,
which usually fall under the responsibility of HV line teams, not belonging to the EPUs
telecom department (or a fully separate telecom entity). Broadband PLC, when used for

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multiple purposes and in particular when commercial services such as customer internet access
are involved, the situation may be more complicated. A separate telecom service providing
entity shall be necessary to deal with this situation.

8.3.3 Transport network assets

Transport layer assets are those related to the bulk transfer of information. Optical and
microwave radio communication equipment and core data network infrastructure constitute the
basic elements of this layer.
If the ownership of physical assets is often a determining factor on the telecom delivery
scheme, transport layer assets can much more easily be procured by the EPU if it intends to
own its assets.
Asset ownership model at this layer is often based on the following factors:

Ownership of underlying physical layer assets When the physical layer assets are not
under EPUs control, it is easier to admit lack of control over the transport layer (e.g.
leasing STM1, E1/T1 or Giga Ethernet connection rather than leasing dark fiber and
repeater housing, power and maintenance). This may lead to more straightforward contract
and SLA management and less interactions.
Required communication bandwidth Narrowband information transport on owned
physical assets, e.g. HV PLC access to substations or wireless SCADA systems, is always
performed with EPU-owned transport network assets. On the other hand, when the
communication requirement are small compared to the capabilities of the available or
suitable communication technology, bandwidth sharing with other users is necessary,
either to justify cost, or to overcome regulatory constraints. (e.g. Broadband wireless data
services, Satellite Communication Hub).
EPUs required level of control over the service The more a communication service is
critical in the EPUs process, the more it is inclined to keep full control of the associated
transport layer assets (e.g. communication services for Protection Relaying applications).
Total Cost of Ownership, Asset Life Cycle and Return on Investment (ROI) The cost of
implementing and maintaining a particular type of transport asset may lead the EPU to
renounce to its ownership. This indeed is to be traded off with the requirement to keep full
control. It should be added that unlike physical assets, transport network layer assets have
much more limited life cycle, meaning that the ROI must be possible in shorter time.
Required skills for managing and maintaining the transport assets The EPU may simply
not have the necessary skills, tools and organization to run a particular type of transport
network, or the organizational capability to keep it up-to-date. Large core data networks
and Network Operation Centre facilities to run bulk information transport are typical
examples of hard-to-maintain assets.

8.3.4 Application service networks and platforms

Application service platforms as those necessary for Utility switched voice and data services
generally belong to the EPU or its telecom Service Provider. Those which are more intimately
related to the operational process or to the operational sites such as teleprotection signalling or
SCADA communications are the property of the EPU operations, while those that are shared
between operational and non-operational activities such as computer networking, voice, e-mail
and intranet servers are often procured and renewed by the Service Provider entity.
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Here again, the short lifecycle of the assets (e.g. IT platforms) and the total cost of ownership
being mainly driven by the cost of upgrading and maintaining, the EPU is highly inclined to
procure services rather than assets. This is therefore a typical area where the Service Provider
is in a better position to invest and to obtain ROI.

8.4 Telecom Service Provider Relationship to the User

The nature of the relationship between the EPU operation-related telecom Service User and the
corresponding telecom Service Provider is multiple and changing over time. Figure 8.4
presents schematically the main patterns encountered in the power utilities. It should be noted
that in a same EPU we can find different schemes for different groups of services, different
layers of telecom service, or different geographical areas. The pattern may change due to EPU
change of policy, regulatory changes, or the evolution of technologies.
This section provides some in-sight into the reasons for adopting each and the corresponding
issues that may arise.
A

Power Corporation
EPU
Telecom
Service
Operations Corporate
Provider
Activities

EPU

Operations
Corporate
Activities

Telecom

B
Operations

EPU

Telecom
Services

EPU

Corporate
Activities

Corporate
Activities

Operations

Telecom
Service
Contractor

Telecom
Assets

EPU

Operations

Corporate
Activities

Telecom
Service
Provider

A: Telecom is part of the operational activity. Corporate entity provisions telecom services separately.
B: Common Telecom (& IT) Services for both Corporate and Operational Applications.
C: TSP is a sister company to the EPU, providing services exclusively (or in priority) for the Power System
D: EPU procures its telecom assets but operates them using an external Service Contractor
E: Telecom services are procured under SLA by a TSP providing services to many customers.

Figure 8.4 Telecom Service Provision Models in the EPU

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8.4.1 Integrated to the Operational User (Type A)

This scheme is the most basic and historically the most employed form of telecom service
provision in the EPU. It relies upon the total ownership of all telecom assets as described in the
previous section, and in-house provision of skills for running the network, which can be
designed, deployed and periodically refurbished through turn-key contracts, or gradually
created through substation, transmission line and SCADA procurements.
Providing telecom services as an integrated activity of the EPU operations has major
advantages which are particularly important where market atypical operations-critical
requirements such as those of Protection communications are concerned:
Full commitment The network specifications in terms of performance, topology and
capability perfectly reflect the user requirements. The telecom staffs priority of the day is
the operation staffs current problems.
Informal relationship Telecom staff are direct colleagues of protection, substation
automation and SCADA engineers. Performance issues and interface requirements,
intervention scheduling and problem solving do not risk to be compromised due to
misunderstanding. Interaction with telecom network management is through internal
meetings without any need for SLA and contract management.
Maximal responsiveness The intervention time of maintenance staff in case of service
interruption is not prolonged due to site access issues and when multiple interventions at
application system and telecom level are required, this can be arranged in minimal time
with only internal field staff likely to be based at the same field maintenance centre.
Synchronized deployment Addition or upgrade of telecom services when a new
application is deployed or when the power system is extended need not be anticipated long
time in advance for provisioning of necessary telecom assets and scheduling of works.
Application and communication service can be provisioned together or at least in a
synchronized manner.
Information Security The telecom system and the corresponding organization and
processes being an integral part of the EPU operations, they are covered by the same
Security Policy. No coordination action or additional auditing is required to assure that the
Security Policy of the Service Provider does not compromise that of the EPU.
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning (DR/BCP) As for information
security, the telecom organization and processes are an integral part of the EPU operations.
No coordination and additional auditing is necessary to assure that DR/BCP of the
provider is not compromising that of the EPU.
The main drawback from this service delivery scheme is indeed the limited possibilities of a
constrained telecom team operating inside the EPU operational entity. The team shall be
dealing only with the operation-related telecom service requirements of the EPU and shall
therefore be unable to implement more complex, more costly and more demanding
technologies, management tools, or at a very high cost due to the small scale of the
requirements.
Another particular concern for this model is its lack of performance and efficiency
measurement through SLA and cost prospective. The quality and cost of the delivered service
is not truly assessed against any particular reference.

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An integrated telecom service provision scheme can scale up to cover corporate or other
communications inside and outside the EPU, but in this case, the evolution to a type B situation
is almost automatic in order to cover assets and running costs for the corporate
communications.

8.4.2 Sister Entity to the Operational User (Type B)

The normal position for an internal telecom Service Provider who delivers services to both
operation-related and corporate enterprise applications is an entity independent from both.
This position allows the delivery of services in a semi-formal relationship with a larger
traffic volume and Service User base.
The provisioning scheme allows to deploy a core network common to operation-related and
corporate services, and to employ data networking and IT specialist skills (necessary for the
corporate communications), in order to implement new generation operation-support services.
This scheme is often the minimum critical mass necessary for the implementation of
enhanced network and service management tools.
The internal nature of the telecom Service Provider still allows a fair level of commitment
although not as informal as the type-A scheme.

8.4.3 Affiliated Service Company (Type C)

Provision of external services (U-Telco) or simply the intention of creating a separate profit
making company can lead to the extraction of the telecom Service Provider from the Utility
organization.
The difference between type B and type-C schemes lies in the freedom of the company in
investment and its consequent overall accountability.
The company can in particular:
Procure its own new assets or extend their capacity,
Design new services,
Extend its customer base to competitive telecom market,
Employ its needed skills and pay competitive salaries to maintain its staff.
Sub-contract tasks and services to specialized contractors
The relationship with operation-related organization is more commercial and based on annual
negotiations based on SLA or service contract.
Service management is formal but in most cases, the history of the telecom Service Provider
converging in the recent past with that of the operations entity, informal relations and
knowledge of the operational applications and people masks any shortcomings in the formal
process. In time, more formal specifications and information exchange processes must replace
the ex-colleague corrective patches.
Service commitment for operation-related services (whether based on SLA or not) remains the
high priority and fundamentally different from SLA commitments towards U-Telco
customers. In the former case, failing to deliver service may lead to enormous damage at the
mother company EPU and in the latter case, only to limited financial sanctions for not meeting
an SLA.

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The liberty of the company in terms of development strategy, assets and human resources and
extra income from sharing the infrastructure with other users (or providing services to external
customers) normally results in a more cost-effective telecom service provision and should lead
to lower service costs for the EPU. On the other hand, the telecom Service Provider must
assume the responsibility for network planning, development and refurbishment of
communication network and service platforms in order to maintain the quality of the delivered
service (e.g. mitigate asset aging) and to ensure that the infrastructure is capable of responding
to new requirements (new services, increased bandwidth requirement, and service migration)
provided that the EPU ensure the financing. This requires periodic assessment of EPU
migration plans at the time of revision of the service catalogue and pricing.
However, delivering U-Telco services can also lead to telecom regulatory issues and in
particular fair trade regulations loosening the preferential links with the EPU. Depending on
the proportions that external service provision may take in comparison to the EPU service, the
danger is that in time, the affiliated telecom company may become simply a normal
commercial service supplier resisting the specificities of the EPUs operational services as
further discussed in chapter 10.

8.4.4 Independent Service Contractor (Type D)

An EPU requiring specific telecom services but not intending to maintain the necessary skills
and organization, may deploy a dedicated telecom infrastructure and maintain the network by
an external contractor.
The perimeter of the service contract may vary according to EPU in-house capabilities:

Service Management
Telecom Infrastructure Management
Field maintenance

The contractor provides organization, process and skills, even the absorption of EPUs
telecom staff and can often better maintain the skilled workforce through more competitive
salary policy than the EPU itself. On the other hand, the EPU shall lose technical knowhow in
medium/long term and consequently the control of its network and of its contractor.
The contractor is engaged with a Service Level Agreement governing its interventions and
services but is not responsible for the failure of ageing assets or their lack of performance
whose renewal policy remains with the EPU employer even if the contractor conserves an
advisory role in this respect. Typically, the service contractor must prepare a yearly
development and refurbishment plan of communication network and service platforms based
upon the EPU plan for application changes and the contractors survey of aging assets. The
contractor can only assume the responsibility of maintaining the quality of the delivered
service if the EPU accepts the refurbishment and new developments ensuring that the
infrastructure is capable of delivering the service.

8.4.5 External Telecom Service Provider (Type E)

The least degree of EPU involvement in the delivery of necessary telecom services is to
procure it according to an SLA from a multi-customer Telecom Service Provider such as the
Public Telecom Operator.

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Procuring telecom services liberates the EPU from procuring assets, deploying infrastructures,
employing skilled workforce, building processes and deploying tools for its management and
maintenance. However, as it will be seen in chapter 10, the EPU shall still need to manage the
external Service Provider with adequate processes (and tools) and adapt the procured
communication resources to the requirements of its internal users.
The infrastructure is extended, diversified, upgraded and renewed without any involvement
from the EPU. However, extensions, new services and service migrations need to be planned
long in advance to ensure that the provider shall have the capability of delivering the new
services (e.g. covering new sites, increasing capacity in remote areas, etc.). This will be
included in the yearly renewal or revision of service contracts.
However, this mode of service provisioning presents many drawbacks which are symmetrically
opposite to the advantages given in section 8.4.1 above. The EPU will have, in particular, to
provide considerable effort in the following domains:
1. Formally and precisely specify service requirements and constraints. It should be noted
that the terms and vocabulary do not have the same significance in public telecom and
in the operational EPU context (e.g. availability) and may lead to misunderstandings
with great consequences. Time behavior and predictability of the connections may be
an important point to consider.
2. Establish Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Sanctions for not respecting them It
should be noted that non-respect of SLA in the world of telecom is sanctioned by
financial compensation with no proportionality to the EPU risks due to lack of service.
3. Carry out Performance Measurement and SLA Monitoring with appropriate tools
4. Provide considerable effort in contract and conflict management,
5. Implement application interfacing and service multiplexing in operational sites where
the service operator cannot access,
6. Coordinate Security Policy and Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plan of the
Service Provider with those of the EPU. Perform audits to assure that they are not
compromised. In particular, power autonomy, or the capability of the telecom service
to be delivered in the event of a power outage through adequately dimensioned
batteries is of great importance for Disaster Recovery.
7. Schedule long in advance any extensions, changes and upgrades and negotiate in good
time with the provider.
8. Avoid monopolies and dominant positions for any single telecom provider which may
increase its prices and decrease the quality of service.
9. Service life expectancy has to be carefully analyzed before using extensively a
standard service delivered by a provider. Many cases can be enumerated where a
standard telecom service used by an EPU is abandoned or replaced by another service
not equivalent for EPU usage (e.g. leased digital circuits used for protection relay
communications).
10. Safety certified field maintenance workforce or safe location for providers assets.

82

As it was stated at the beginning of this chapter, different telecom service provisioning modes
often co-exist in the same EPU depending on the nature of services.

When operation-related telecom services are provisioned through an integrated entity (type
A), then corporate communications are generally through procured service (type E).

When operational and corporate services are integrated into the same provisioning model
and organization (type B, C or D), then Protection communications are often separated
from this integrated approach and performed directly through separate fibres (or
wavelengths).

Figure 8.5 summarizes main service delivery modes in different types of EPU.
Telecom Provider Profile
Integrated with
the Operational
User

Sister Entity to
Operational
User

Affiliated Service
Company
(to Service User
or to Holding)

EPU Profile (Role)

Independent
System Operator

TSO /

Generation
Company

Distribution
Network Operator

Public Telecom
Operator
(Procured
Service)
Communicates
essentially to
other EPUs.
Has no telecom
infrastructure

National / Regional
System Operator

Transmission Grid
Company

Independent
Service
Contractor

Operationrelated service
with limited
resources

Cost efficiency User or holding Generally result

criteria
Provide service
owns assets
of growth and
separation of
to IT/Corporate Provide services but managed
user
affiliated Uto independent and maintained
by contractor
Telco
profit centres

PTO cannot
provide
coverage for
HPP or off-shore
wind farm

Wireless SCADA
Mobile
workforce

Small number
of high traffic
urban sites for
TPP
Use of
backbone for
Metering,
Commercial
offices & IT

Generally using
customer access
for providing
other U-Telco
services

Large number
of sites with
little traffic,
Metering,
Mobile comms

Figure 8.5 Examples of use for different telecom service provision schemes in the EPU

83

9 FEDERATING SERVICES ON THE PRIVATE INFRASTRUCTURE

9.1 Introduction
The high cost of implementing private broadband telecom infrastructures with their high
potential bandwidth, which is well beyond the operational applications requirements,
encourages Power Utilities to seek Return on Investment through carrying non-operational
traffic on the same infrastructure. This is further encouraged by Utilities ever increasing
expenditure for non-operational communications as well as the potential to generate extra
revenue through provision of commercial telecom services in the deregulated energy and
telecommunication environment. However, carrying operational and corporate/commercial
traffic on the same network impacts the organization, processes and investment plans.
Corporate enterprise and commercial services can be delivered through the same dedicated
network which provides for EPU operational telecom service requirements and planned,
managed and operated by a common service providing entity. In this case, the power system
operation entities become privileged clients of the Service Provider. It should be noted that the
primary purpose of the dedicated network is to provide adequate service to these critical
clients. Failing to meet the commercial service level results in financial penalty, but not
providing operational service may mean major power system incident!
Corporate enterprise and commercial services can also be delivered through a fully separate
network using dedicated fibres in the Utilitys optical cables. In this case, service and
infrastructure planning, network architecture, as well as infrastructure and service management
can be performed independently from those associated with the EPUs operational services.
The commercial revenue generating telecom service in the former case generally concerns
carrier services (surplus transmission capacity) or increasingly, higher level services such as
Ethernet or IP connectivity. In the case of fully separate services, the revenue generating
activity can also concern leasing of dark fibers which represents lower investment,
organizational adaptation and risk, but also lower profit objectives.
The vital issue to consider here is the way to assure that the core business operational and
operation support services quality and security levels are not degraded by these coexisting
non-operational services.
The present section aims to enumerate different solutions used by Power Utilities to assure the
coexistence and separation of services on the same infrastructure together with their impact on
organizational issues.

84

9.2 Process and Organization Issues

The adopted separation of operational, corporate enterprise and commercial (revenue making)
telecom services depends upon process and organization issues some of which are as follows.
Issue

Impact on Service integration

Regulatory, License and Asset

Ownership issues Do regulations
and/or concession contracts allow
the surplus capacity of assets and
infrastructures to be used for other
purpose other than the operation?

Regulations may limit the use of assets to

operational applications if declared as expenditure
for secure delivery of power.
Optical cable may be state-owned and conceded only
for operational use. (Section 8.3 on asset ownership).
Licenses may exclude usage beyond operational use.
Telecom through power system operation entity
Operation-oriented processes (focusing on the secure
operation of the overall power system).
Integrates the operation of platforms and
applications (Protection, Scada, etc.)
Inadequate size and organization for managing
corporate and/or commercial type services.
Telecom Service Provider entity
Manage all telecom services (op & non-op),
Service-focused
process
(provider-client
organization), distancing from power system
operational teams, platforms and applications.
Can include the provision of U-Telco services on the
private infra-structure.
Telecom through power system operation entity
Staff expertise is mainly power system oriented with
a good knowledge of SCADA and Protection
Multi-disciplinary field intervention staff, integrated
into
regional
power
system
maintenance
organization possibly with multiple skills (RTU or
protection)
Telecom Service Provider entity
Staff expertise is mainly IT-oriented and focused on
network services (not on power system applications),
often with intensive outsourcing
Regionally located field staff to provide full support
and to assure the SLA

Service Management
Organization & Formal Processes
Management of operational telecom
services is performed by Power
System Operation entity (Control
Centre and Operational Areas) or
by a separate Service Provider
managing operational and nonoperational communications?

Management of Expertise and

Skilled Resources How much
and which type telecom expertise is
(or planned to be) existing in the
organization?

85

Provider-client Service
Management Platform

Network Scalability Does the

network architecture and structure
allow its growth to accommodate
new services and users on the
corporate/commercial side?
Security Management

Providing large scale commercial and corporate

communications
over
the
dedicated
telecom
infrastructure implicates heavy investments for
provider-client service management platforms for
maintaining, managing, configuring, provisioning and
billing processes, in line with the business requirements
(refer to section 6):
NOC (24x7x365 Network Operations Centre)
BSS (Business Support Systems)
OSS (Operations Support Systems)
Providing non-operational services on the dedicated
infrastructure must take into account the future growth of
these services. Network design and planning can no
longer be based on technologies, structures and
dimensioning which would be used for operational
purpose only.
Integrating corporate and commercial services on the
dedicated infrastructure implies that appropriate security
processes and technologies assuring an adequate level of
service isolation must be implemented.

86

9.3 Technical Solutions

Different technologies can be used to support Operational and Non-Operational services on a
same telecom infrastructure with different levels of separation:
Dedicated fibres
Wavelength allocation (WDM),
Dedicated bandwidth allocation (e.g. different bandwidth over SDH)
Ethernet VLAN or MPLS VPN separation
Op.
Services
separated
from

Using

Separate Fibres

Commercial
Telecom Service

Most commonly
used

Corporate Data
Network

Corporate ICT
managed by fully
distinct entity

High Speed Data

Services (IP data)

Core data network

with Gbps
capacity

Protection
Applications

Used for
Protection comms
between
substations
terminating a
dedicated OPGW

Separate
Wavelength

Used to
economize fibre
or optical device
for some (long)
links

Same as Separate
Fibre but in a
fibre-constrained
context (requires
common optical
network
management)
Used to separate
Protection from a
multi-service IP
/MPLS network in
a fibreconstrained
context

Separate Phys.
Bandwidth
Not used except
for some special
access services
and when one
EPU sells
bandwidth to
another EPU or
another Utility
Only specific
corporate links
implemented
through dedicated
telecom

Separate
Virtual Network

Multi-service
IP/MPLS
network
integrating
operational,
corporate and/or
commercial
services with
VPN separation

IP access to HV
substations
Used when
Protection is
integrated in a
SDH/PDH
dedicated network

None at present

Figure 9.1 Commonly used Service Separation schemes employed in Electrical Power
Utilities

9.3.1 Fibre Separation in Optical Cables

Using separate fibres in Utility optical cable (e.g. OPGW) is the simplest solution for
separating services and the most commonly used when sufficient fibre is available. Cables
generally provide a fibre count in excess of 12 (or more often 24) which allows the usage of
separate fibres as follows:

87

For commercial and/or corporate services mainly used when corporate and commercial
service is provided by separate entity or when an EPU has to account for regulated and
unregulated (commercial) activities using segregated accounting practices.
For Protection mainly used when telecom service providing entity does not provide
protection communication services
For Core IP/MPLS data network mainly used when the telecom entity operates an SDH
network and an IP/MPLS core data network.

9.3.2 Wavelength Separation through C- or D-WDM

Wavelength division multiplexing is increasingly in use in power utility communication
networks. In this case, the objective is not generally to increase the transmission capacity per
fibre (as for telecom operators) but rather to provide separation between services:

Assure separation of operational, corporate and U-Telco services,

Assure the coexistence of SDH multiplexing networks with packet-oriented IP/MPLS core
data networks for which traditional SDH cannot deliver the required scalability. CWDM in
this case is used as an overlay onto existing legacy PDH/SDH optical systems, thereby
enabling additional services to be delivered while preserving the assets for current legacy
systems.

Delivering pseudo-fibre services to some operational users and applications such as

protection relay communications in certain cases.

The use of wavelength separation rather than fibre separation is also a particularly appropriate
solution where extra fibre is not available, cannot be provisioned economically or existing
extra fibres can be used in a more attractive manner (e.g. profitably leased). A typical example
is to break into a prior existing trunk cable to enable delivery of more localized services in a
region.
The significant cost reduction and reliability improvement in recent years has rendered the
WDM technologies an accessible and economical solution in existing private optical networks
for providing secure transparent connectivity services.
CWDM is the low cost technology for multiplexing up to 16 transmission channels over a
wavelength domain from 1300 nm to 1610 nm with channel spacing of 20 nm (ITU-T G.694.2
and G.695).
Its main market is cost effective transportation in metro networks and can be used in different
types of network configurations. The transmission range is often limited (around 40 km when
using all 16 channels, and around 100 km when utilizing only 8 channels).
DWDM on the other hand, is a technology used for long distance and/or very high capacity
links. It can typically carry from 32 to several hundred channels over a wavelength domain
from 1530 nm to 1624 nm (ITU-T G.694.1) with a channel spacing less than 1 nm. This results
in the requirement for precise wavelength control of the laser light source and temperature
stabilization in the multiplexing units. The transmission range is around 80-100 km.
The WDM scheme adopted by utilities depends on the planned expansion of activities. In most
cases, where the network is essentially dedicated to internal requirements (operational and nonoperational) with limited external Service Provider capability, CWDM is the cost-effective

88

solution, DWDM being reserved for larger capacity requirements and long segments requiring
amplification. High power WDM systems have been reported allowing long spans without
costly wavelength control [29].

9.3.3 Bandwidth Separation through PDH/SDH

The SDH and PDH technologies constitute the existing (or legacy) core of most EPU telecom
networks deployed in the 90s and still considered by many as providing in a well-proven
manner the low latency, the time predictability and the fast protection mechanisms required
for many utility operational services. Their Time Division Multiplexing scheme is used to
provide separation between different services inside the SDH (or PDH) bandwidth. Packet
adaptations and specific mechanisms (e.g. Ethernet over SDH) provide for efficiently sharing
packet oriented traffic on part of the TDM bandwidth.

9.3.4 Virtual Network Separation (MPLS VPN or Ethernet VLAN)

Virtual Networking allows different user services to share a common packet network while
remaining logically isolated through different labeling recognized in switching or routing
nodes. It can be set up at different logical layers of the data network, but virtual separation
performed at lower layers allows tighter control of performance such as time delay,
predictability and service isolation.
Ethernet VLANs are logically separate Ethernet networks each with its own broadcast domain,
shared bandwidth (e.g. SDH payload capacity), cabling and infrastructure, meaning that
Ethernet frames from one VLAN will not be transmitted onto another VLAN. VLAN
separation is widely used for EPU operational applications in particular through Ethernet over
SDH, e.g. TCP/IP SCADA and IP voice connections. The restricted broadcast domain provides
a powerful security mechanism, limiting inter-VLAN exchange to central router sites with
adequate traffic filtering and security barriers.
Implementing VLANs over an Ethernet is an appropriate solution when the number of virtual
connections across the network remains moderate. When the network and its provided services
grow considerably in size (e.g. providing commercial services), VLANs can be scaled up
through an MPLS core network.
Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) implements different logical customer networks over
the same physical network in a scalable manner. This provides a solution which is
economically more attractive than building physical connectivity per service, although this
latter may well be necessary for some specific or very critical services in order to guarantee
QoS and service segregation.
MPLS makes use of label switching customer traffic is tagged at the ingress port, forwarded
across the network using the label (not the destination address) and delivered at the egress port
after removing the label. This provides a simple way of building VPNs (Virtual Private
Networks) on a multiservice network. These are conceptually equivalent to leased multi-point
circuits, but with advanced features such as connection-oriented operation, traffic engineering,
QoS, and facilitated addition and removal of sites/nodes. The VPN of each customer or service
using a uniquely identified label, the segregation of traffic from different customers/services is
guaranteed, hence providing service isolation and security.

89

Providing IP connectivity for operational and corporate (and perhaps U-Telco) services, over
the same physical network bandwidth remains controversial and subject to discussion in many
EPUs. While dedicated channel-based technologies such as SDH or WDM, rarely raise the
question of a service putting another at risk, there is a natural distrust for service provisioning
models based upon shared resource environments such as MPLS, and in fact defined security
policies need to be enacted to ensure that the separate VPNs are in fact securely delivered [30].
There are some basic rules that must be addressed in order to permit coexistence of internal
and external customer services in the same MPLS network:
MPLS being is a carrier oriented backbone technology, it is highly recommended not
to mix the carrier network with customer networks. Adopt the MPLS recommended
topology consisting of Provider, Provider Edge and Customer Edge routers.
Avoid connecting layer 2 customer equipments directly to the MPLS core network;
Before configuring an MPLS service one must ensure that all customer service
requirements (availability, bandwidth, delay, maximum re-convergence time, etc.) are
known and can be guaranteed. For some specific services MPLS may not be the best
solution;
Each customer service must have its own separate MPLS VPN service;
Customer service level requirements must be guaranteed through implementing
Quality of Service for service prioritization and data flow performance;
MPLS Traffic Engineering must be implemented to have a more efficient network
usage, to deal with network congestions and strong traffic pattern changes;
The network must be protected from the security threats that may originate from
customers. Configure and operate the network with a secure network management
system, secure protocols and secure procedures;
The network must be monitored in terms of equipment interconnection load, packet
loss, resilient connections availability and security events;
It may be envisaged to implement independent data networks for internal services
(MPLS or simply IP) and external commercial services (MPLS). Such architectures
get the best of both worlds at somehow higher cost, providing complete segregation
between internal and commercial services while taking advantage of multi-service and
multi-customer capabilities of MPLS.
To end this section, it should be noted that MPLS is now an aging technology first developed
a decade ago. It remains complex and does not fully respond to all requirements in particular
for delay- and jitter-intolerant services. A number of other Scalable Ethernet transport (or
Carrier Ethernet) technologies have been specified and developed, fulfilling exclusively the
transport objectives of MPLS:

PBB-TE (Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Eng.) specified by IEEE (802.1Qay2009) delivering WAN Ethernet services without the protocol complexity of MPLS.
An example of such implementation at experimental stage has been demonstrated in
Argentina [31], elaborating a two layer architecture associating CWDM and PBB-TE
to deliver new and legacy operational services.

MPLS-TP (Transmission Profile) under preparation by ITU-T/IETF (in 2010) is a

MPLS-compatible network standard with SDH-like restoration and delay.

This subject is further discussed in section 12.4 Telecom Technology Evolutions.

90

10 MANAGEMENT OF TELECOM SERVICE AND INFRASTRUCTURE

10.1 Introduction - Need for a Management System
Delivering or provisioning telecom services in the modern EPU requires an extensive effort in
terms of management both at the high-level (policy, planning, partnerships, etc.) and at the
day-to-day operational level (organization, customer relation, service management, asset
management, field maintenance, etc.).
Management implies the association of people structured into an organization, adequate
processes defining peoples roles and their interactions, and appropriate tools allowing the
fulfilment and monitoring of the process, in order to provide a service with a quality and cost
which satisfies the end user (customer).
The success of a management set-up depends upon the adequate dimensioning of the
organization, process and tools relative to the scope of activity, and their size and complexity
matching.

An extremely light organization with minimal processes and elementary tools may be
sufficient for dealing with a small network dedicated to a very limited scope of services.
However, if the scope of delivery grows in scale, then the light scheme will become
completely ineffective.

A large and complex formal process can overkill an activity if it is imposed onto a small
organization with a limited scope of service delivery. Large management tools in small
organizations may fully jeopardize the workforce, becoming occupied with the tools
rather than with delivering the communication service.

A large workforce composed of in-house and external contractor staff delivering

services to multiple users at different geographical sites cannot work with informal
arrangements as would a team of five technicians delivering services to their next door
operational colleagues.

Management
Tools

Management
Scope
Management

Management

Organization

Process

Figure 10.1 Organization, Process and Tools adequacy to the Scope of delivery
91

In the case of EPU telecommunications, the management scheme has been trivial and implicit
in the past due to the small scale, simple and time-invariant nature of requirements, informal
user relationships, and non-recovery (sometimes non-assessment) of costs. The typical service
delivery model in this case has been the Type A or Integrated model described in section 8.4.
However, it is often observed that many EPUs undertake major changes in terms of scale and
scope of telecom service delivery focalizing on the infrastructure capacity and technology
without paying sufficient attention to the associated management aspects. The organization
moves from type A to types B or C (section 8.4) assuming that that same informal management
process may remain sufficient. The EPU telecom provisioning moves to external contractors
services for running and maintaining the telecom network or even to provide managed
telecommunication services (types D and E) hoping that the contractor or provider would find
himself bound by implicit constraints of the proper operation of EPUs critical applications,
resulting in non-satisfaction and conflicts.
Indeed, the investment in a standards-based, well-defined management framework is far from
trivial endeavor. In particular, managing the network cannot be reduced to purchasing high cost
sophisticated network management tools.
Some of the reasons justifying a redesign of management system and processes in the EPU
Telecom Service Delivery are given below. The triggering condition is generally the intention
to change the scope of service delivery (e.g. customer base), the scale of services, the
organization, or the evolution of the service and/or infrastructure beyond its initial deployment
objectives:

Complexity of the network and its underlying infrastructure necessitating the cooperation
of several complementary skills.

Multiplicity of service provisioning possibilities including different levels of external

service contractor intervention

Reduced workforce and less interchangeability of staff implying that roles and
responsibilities must be more clearly defined

Geographical and functional separation of actors (executive and strategic planning,

deployment, service operation, maintenance, and service usage) necessitating a clearer
definition of the expectations of each actor from other parties.

Changing requirements driven by government programs for the foreseen electrical

network of the future and its critical reliance on communications.

Need to demonstrate compliance and efficiency to regulators (technical, economic, etc.)

The present chapter aims to produce guidelines for the definition of management processes
governing the provision and delivery of telecom services in the EPU. It aims to establish a
reduced framework, applicable to the domain of Utility telecommunications, comprising a
well-defined set of processes to formalize the roles and the interactions. The framework is
based upon existing Best Practices and existing Management Frameworks which, as they are,
may appear too complex to be relevant in this context. It should still be noted that the specified
framework remains a pick and choose base to be used by each Utility according to its
specificities and its positioning across the business maturity timeline as described in the next
section.
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10.2 Present State Assessment and Target Definition

10.2.1 Telecom Business Maturity Modelling
A formal approach to process definition implies neither a standard process nor a unique
organization model. These depend upon the exact scope and scale of the EPU in telecom
service provision as previously discussed in chapter 8. The same process can, in the case of one
EPU, be merged into the duties of one person, or in another EPU, partitioned and represent the
activities of a whole team. For example, a type E service provisioning (figure 8.4) mainly
requires extensive supplier relation management while a type A service provisioning mainly
requires extensive infrastructure fault management.
In order to design a management process that is applicable and appropriate for a particular EPU
it is necessary to perform a Business Maturity analysis establishing a stepped maturity
model moving from present state situation to a target state in the future and mapping out how
to progress between these two.
Business Maturity models can be based on standard tools such as those elaborated for
Smartgrid evolution (Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, [32]). In a
basic model, different evolution stages are defined as follows:
1. Initiating Exploring, Building a Business Case
2. Investing Implementing extended scope services, Developing new schemes
3. Integrating The deployed scheme is still being adapted in order to fit the
organizational and business requirements
4. Optimizing A new scheme being deployed successfully, fine adjustments are being
applied to correct and optimize minor aspects
5. Innovating Having implemented an operating scheme and based upon the acquired
experience, the organization is exploring new directions
Figure 10.2 presents an example of such a stepped maturity model applied to the EPU telecom
service delivery/provisioning.
The stepped Business Maturity Model can easily be employed in relation to the Service
Delivery models previously defined in figure 8.4 to establish where an EPU stands in terms of
telecom activity and its target in terms of evolution considering its intentions and strategies.
Naturally, a type A telecom activity will be located at the early steps of all scales due to its
small interaction with any external parties, both customer and provider/contractor. On the other
hand, a telecom scheme in which service consumer and provider are fully separate (types C, D
and E) are located at the far end of the scales.
Designing a management process also requires reference to existing needs in terms of services
and constraints (SLAs) as well as the envisaged and planned evolutions (refer to section on
SLA). An important issue here is indeed the manner in which a redesigned management
process can be applied and the migration path towards the new management system.

93

Providing Service to External Customers & U-Telco Business Involvement

Internal
Multi-User
Services

Operational
Services
only

External
Leasing of
Facilities

External
Managed
Services

External
Non-IP
Wholesale

External
IP Service
Wholesale

External
Retail
Services

External Contractor & Service Provider Involvement

Support
Contracts for
sub-systems

Supplier
Helpdesks &
Warranties only

Field
Maintenance
Contracts

Full Service
Delivery
Contracts

Service costs
estimated but
not recovered

Service costs
recovered at
no profit

Service price
established as
Service Catalog

Relationship
can get formal if
problems arise

Formal SLA
No systematic
measurement

Liable to SLA
Must constantly
produce formal
proof

Procure
Telecom
Services

Cost Recovery from Service Users

Overall telecom
budget without
repartition

Resource
repartition per
contributing
entity

Telecom Liability to Service Users

Implicit,
User application
serves to
define the QoS

Required QoS
is defined &
agreed upon

Figure 10.2 - Example of Business Maturity Analysis stepped model

10.2.2

Management Process Maturity

The Business Maturity model discussed in the previous section locates the EPU telecom
activity and involvement at present and in the future, but does not situate it in terms of present
and future management practice.
Moreover, transforming the work process of an organization cannot be performed overnight,
moving from chaotic, informal ad hoc relationships of a very small delivery unit to a fully
mature value-oriented scalable organization with tools, processes and work practice that
continuously align to business requirements and opportunities. This has lead to the definition
of Capability Maturity Models composed of different maturity levels. This stepped model
can be used to assess the capabilities of the management processes in the EPU Telecom
scheme as illustrated in figure 10.3.
A maturity level is a defined evolutionary plateau for organizational process improvement.
Each maturity level covers an important subset of the organizations processes, preparing it to
move to the next maturity level. The maturity levels are measured by the achievement of the
specific and generic goals associated with each predefined set of process areas. A capability
level for a process area is on the other hand, achieved when all of the generic goals are satisfied
up to that level [33].
It should however be noted that the target state is not necessarily the highest
maturity/capability levels for all management processes. Many processes may be fully
acceptable at a reactive stage (repeatable) considering the required cost and effort for moving
to a proactive stage. Moreover, no matter how proactive you are, there will always be
unexpected problems that call for an immediate reaction. It is much more important to check if

94

the documented processes are effectively being followed and not constantly worked around
due to being not adapted, too costly or requiring more effort that the organization can
afford.
Capability Maturity Levels

EPU Telecom Service Management

Chaotic management of telecom services
Processes are ad hoc and
1
Initial
generally responding to problems as they occur
disorganized
and signaled by users
Reactive management of service through
Processes follow a
2
Repeatable
monitoring of the telecom infrastructure alarms
regular pattern
by one or multiple coordinated teams
Proactive service management following
Processes are
documented processes including predictive and
3
Defined
documented and
preventive actions on network performance and
communicated
availability
Processes are monitored
Quantitative measurement of process
4
Managed
and measured
effectiveness through KPI monitoring
Business value-oriented management capable of
Best Practices are
5
Optimized
optimizing services in terms of efficiency
followed and automated
through continuous improvement
Figure 10.3 - Capability Maturity model based on COBIT and Carnegie Mellon CMM
Finally, setting up a management process framework must always be accompanied by some
means of evaluating its effectiveness and the extent of its application. This allows continuous
improvement and necessary adjustments to the processes and to the organization in order to
fulfill the overall goal of efficiently providing service of adequate quality to the customers.
This brief description has been extracted and compiled from a number of sources [33], [34],
[35] and is only given as a starting point for further investigation. Auditing of management
processes and maturity scales is part of the wider domain of IT governance which is indeed
beyond the scope of the present document on telecom services. Interested readers may refer to
specialized literature and in particular to those relating to COBIT and CMMI.

95

10.3 Management Frameworks & Best Practices

10.3.1 Introduction
Telecom management is the subject of numerous standards and is partitioned according to
different cleavage lines depending on the purpose of the partitioning. In particular, the FCAPS
model and the TMN Logical Layered Architecture (LLA) must be mentioned:

ITU-T M.3400 FCAPS Management functions (Fault, Configuration, Accounting,

Performance and Security Management) have been used for grouping of functions in the
development of Network Management Systems associated to Telecom equipment [36].

TMN Logical Layered Architecture (LLA) defined by ITU-T M3010 (Elements, Network,
Service, and Business Management) has, on the other hand, been devised for extending the
visibility of the management system through different layers of abstraction. It extends the
NMS vision beyond the individual network elements into the vision of the network
composed of many network elements, and then covering multiple networks to manage a
whole service, and different telecom services constituting a telecom business [37].

For analyzing the overall management process for telecom services in the EPU however, one
needs at the same time a functional view (Fault, Performance, etc.), a lifecycle view (long-term
decision making, deployment and upgrades, day-to-day operation) and a logical layer view
(Element, Network, Service and Business).
FCAPS and LLA have been widely treated in previous CIGRE Brochures (e.g. [38]). In the
present document we focus on Management Frameworks defining the business processes that
must be deployed and their interactions and in further sections on applications, tools and
information systems.

10.3.2 ITIL Framework

IT services have pioneered in applying a formal approach to the specification of operation
processes. ITIL (IT infrastructure library), initially developed by UK Central Computer and
Telecommunication Agency (CCTA) and supported by IT Service Management Forum
(itSMF), gives a set of guidelines for a structured, common-sense, process-driven approach to
ensure close alignment between IT and business processes without imposing any universal
solution to the process design and implementation for the management and delivery of IT
services.
Applied to a telecom Service Provider, ITIL service management principally defines the
processes necessary for the delivery of IT services (IT view) necessary for the fulfillment of
the Telecom Providers Business Processes. These include telecom Network Management
System (NMS), trouble ticketing and incident management tools, IP Voice servers, intranet
facilities, etc.
ITIL V2 (the commonly employed version) divides management business processes into
functional groups (logical sets):

Service Support
Service Delivery
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ICT Infrastructure Management

Security Management
Business Perspective
Application Management
Software Asset Management

The replacement version V3 (since 2009) globally covers the same scope but organized in a
service life-cycle-oriented manner (i.e. Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition,
Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement).
Through a scalable and flexible adopt and adapt approach, ITIL is applicable to all IT
organizations irrespective of their size or the technology in use.
Many EPUs are at present using the ITIL framework (or standards based upon it) for the
management and governance of their IT infrastructure and services, implying familiarity,
practice and trained staff. This covers the corporate and operational information platforms in
terms of IT service delivery, IT service support and other associated processes. Applying ITIL
may therefore be an obligation through corporate policy, on the IT part of the EPU telecom
provider activities and on common processes such as Service Support (e.g. Service Desk) if
Telecom and IT organizations are merged.
ITIL is further described in the Appendix 7 and in [39].

10.3.3 NGOSS Frameworx

The TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) developed a much wider framework called NGOSS
(New Generation Operation Support Systems) which in 2010 was upgraded to Frameworx.
NGOSS - Frameworx is a Solution Framework for Telecom Service Providers with various
entry points based upon focus/needs of the frameworks user. This framework may be used as
a reference for discussion on different aspects of management (our usage in this paper) or for
defining the scope and boundaries of management application development projects.
It covers the following components:

Business Process Framework eTOM (Enhanced Telecom Operations Map also

published by ITU-T as Recommendations M.3050.x). The Business Process Framework
may be used to support organizational analysis, launch process harmonization
initiatives, and show points of interoperability between applications
Information Framework SID This framework provides for enterprise-wide
information reference model and vocabulary. It may be used by IT departments to
tackle data diversity, or as a starting point for information-related projects such as for
database design,
Application Framework TAM Common language to describe systems and their
functions. It may also used as a procurement checklist for management tools.
Integration Framework Management application integration concepts and principles.
The Integration Frameworks APIs (Application Programming Interface) and business
services can be used to support application interoperability.

NGOSS-Frameworx and its constituents are described in more detail in Appendix 8 and in
[40].

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10.3.4 Business Process Framework eTOM

The Business Process Framework component of NGOSS-Frameworx called the Enhanced
Telecom Operation Map (eTOM) describes all the enterprise processes required by a Telecom
Service Provider and analyses them to different depths (level 0, level 1, etc.). It can be used to
analyze existing business processes, to identify redundancy or gaps in the current strategies,
and to re-engineer processes correcting deficiencies and adding automation [41].
Management business processes in eTOM are partitioned into three areas:
Processes related to building a telecom activity (Strategy, infrastructure and
product)
Processes related to running a telecom activity (Operations)
Enterprise processes which are not specific to the telecom activity (Enterprise)
The eTOM model further defines two main groups of interactions to the outside world:
Interactions with telecom service customers
Interactions with providers and suppliers of services
The eTOM model locates individual business processes across four transversals:

Market, Product and Customer transversal This includes all upstream and operations
processes which are directly in contact with the customer/user. It is the customer view of
the Telecom Management. In this context, product means a productized service
proposed by the provider to his customers (e.g. a communication service with a preestablished level of quality and price a standard SLA)

Service This covers all processes required for the delivery and support of
communication services to its customers using owned resources and/or other suppliers
and partners procured services.

Resources (Applications, Computing and Network) This covers the management

processes relative to network infrastructure and associated tools and applications which
are employed for delivering the service. This horizontal corresponds to the network view
of the management process.

Supplier/partner This covers all processes concerning relationships to contractors,

partners and suppliers whose services enable the organization to provide telecom
services or to maintain the network infrastructure used for telecom service delivery.

At first glance, eTOM Business Process framework looks terribly complex and mainly relevant
to competitive customer-driven Telecom Service Provider business with millions of customers,
very large number of assets, numerous support service suppliers and a large and continually
renewed service portfolio. Modeling the relatively modest scope of EPU telecom service
provision/delivery through the strength of a Telecom Operator Business Process Modeling tool
is not immediately obvious.
However, it should be noted that eTOM framework is structured for pick and choose of
relevant sections according to the scale and size of the activity and may be adapted to
requirements. Process elements representing the activity of a whole department in the case of a
Public Telecom Operator may be part of the mission of one person or entity in the EPU
telecom organization. eTOM identifies in a detailed manner the required interactions and
allows the detection of potential areas of automation and IT support.
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10.3.5 Relating ITIL to eTOM Framework

There is no incompatibility between ITIL and eTOM. They simply do not address the same
scope: ITIL covers IT service management in any IT context (IT view) and eTOM covers
Business Processes of a Telecom Service Provider (Business view). A detailed analysis of ITIL
and eTOM in the context of telecom service delivery is performed by ITU-T Rec. M3050
Supplement 1 [42]. The document supports the understanding that a common, integrated view
can be derived so that either an eTOM-based or an ITIL-based solution can be understood in
terms of the other perspective. Some differences in vocabulary, and process partitioning
between ITIL and eTOM are presented in the same document and the mapping of ITIL V2
primary processes on an eTOM map is presented in the figure 10.4.

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Figure 10.4 - eTOM L2 Operations processes and ITIL processes

(TM Forum document GB921-V, Release 6) and [42]

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10.4 Towards a Utility Telecom Management Framework

10.4.1 Introduction
The EPU telecom management processes can broadly be divided into two groups as shown in
figure 10.5:

Upstream Management comprises all the processes necessary for building the
telecommunication policy and the provisioning model in conjunction with the power
utility actors and the regulating authorities, setting up the business plan for the adopted
service delivery organization, and deploying the necessary infrastructure and/or contracts.
The outcome is an organization with staff, processes, assets and service contracts which
allow through day-to-day operation to deliver the necessary telecom services within the
EPU. The deployment process also includes the migration planning from the existing
scheme (or network) into the target service provisioning/delivery model and underlying
infrastructure. This aspect is discussed in section 10.5.

Current Operations consist in running a network and providing services to different users.
It comprises different work tasks in relation to external Service Providers, in relation to
EPU service customers, and in relation to the network services and infrastructures as well
as associated tools.

Upstream Management
Organization,
Process,
Network Assets,
Service Contracts,
Service Catalog

Policy Definition
Business Planning
Deployment
Upgrade & Migration
Business Development
Operational Data,
Assessments,
Audit Reports,
Asset Requests

Current Operations

Customer Relations
Service Management
Infrastructure Management
Provider Management

Figure 10.5 Management process for delivering/provisioning of telecom services

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10.4.2 Utility Telecom Management Operations Map (uTOM)

Based on the considerations previously described in this chapter and keeping eTOM as a highlevel reference, we can define the following attributes for a Utility Telecom Management
framework:
1. The telecom entity must manage two interfaces whatever be the delivery model
Interface to Service Customers/Users
Interface to Service Providers/Contractors
Depending on the service delivery model (refer to fig 8.6), the services that the telecom
entity procures through providers and contractors can be technical support, field
maintenance, dark fibre, bulk transmission capacity or leased application-level
connectivity.
2. A service Provision layer allows the telecom entity to employ self-owned facilities and/or
other provider services to deliver a satisfactory level of communication service to the
customers/users
Even in the case of directly procuring application-level connectivity, a thin telecom
service layer is still required:
Ensure that User requirements are correctly mapped to providers service obligations
and delivered quality
Associate multiple procured services from different providers in order to meet the
availability and fault tolerance constraints of critical applications.

Customer / User

Customer / User Relationship

Service Provision Process
Provider / Contractor Relationship

Provider / Contractor
Figure 10.6 Basic model demonstrating Service Provisioning from (external) Providers and
Service Delivery to (internal) Users

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3. The management model for Utility Telecom services must cover the whole life-time of the
service provision cycle:
Building a strategy for the provisioning & delivery of telecom services
Building the capability to materialize the provisioning & delivery scheme
Defining the perimeter of services to be proposed to the customers
Operating the service
Upstream Management

Strategy

Operations

Capability
Building

Building
Build a strategy for the
provisioning & delivery
of telecom services
Define Policy
Identify Opportunities
Set-up Business Plan
Convince stake-holders
Set-up Strategic Partnerships
Solve Regulatory Issues

Build the capability to

materialize the delivery
scheme

Business

Operating

Development

Scheme

Define the perimeter of

services to be proposed to
the customers

Define Service Catalog

Deploy Network Resources
Adjust Service Pricing
Constitute Operation Team
Provision Services & Support Specify Service Migrations
Deploy tools & Processes

Operate & Maintain the

Service and the
Infrastructure
Initialize Services
Deliver over Network Resources
Maintain Network Resources
Provide Support to Users
Invoice & Get Paid

Figure 10.7 Telecom Management Process Life-cycle

The Upstream Management can be further divided along the time cycle into:

Policy Definition & Business Planning (or Strategy Building)

Strategic Deployment & Tactical Adjustment (or Capability Building)
Business Development

This division corresponds to the eTOM verticals called S (Strategy & Commit), I
(Infrastructure), and P (Product) adapted to the Utility Telecom context.
4. In the great majority of Electrical Power Utilities, telecom services are delivered through
an owned telecom infrastructure requiring extensive network infrastructure management.
The telecom management framework must therefore include a Network Resource
management process layer. Adopting eTOM structures, this also includes the management
of all IT tools and platforms associated to the telecom network and service management.
5. Operations management processes generally follow a same pattern which is illustrated in
figure 10.8 as Initialize, Deliver, Provide Support and Get Paid. This corresponds to the
eTOM verticals called Fulfilment, Assurance, Support and Accounting (or Billing).
A user request (e.g. a new SCADA connectivity) is initialized on the basis of a
previously defined SLA (type of interface, capacity, QoS, etc.).
The service is delivered to the user from the moment it is registered, provisioned over
the network and established. Support is given to the user at different levels for this new
connectivity.
The telecom provider entity may measure the usage of the network and invoice the
SCADA entity for the communication service.

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Deploy &
Adjust

Business Development
Service Portfolio Evolution
Service Migration Planning

Customer / User
Operations

Upstream
Management

Build Service Offer

Build Capability

Build Strategy

Strategy &
Planning

Customer / User Relationship

Service Management
Resource Management
Provider / Contractor Relationship

Security, BCP, Safety, Skill Mgt

Provider / Contractor
Enterprise
Processes
Initialize

Deliver

Get Paid

Provide Support

Figure 10.8 Utility Telecom Operations Map (uTOM)

6. In addition to the Upstream and Operational Management processes defined previously, a
telecom Service Provider enterprise owns a number of general processes which are
generally performed at the corporate enterprise level. These processes include Human
Resource, Skill Management and Training, Risk Management, Financial Management,
Quality Assurance, etc.
In an Electrical Power Utility, these corporate activities are not specific to the telecom
service providing entity and as such, are not necessary in the present analysis. However, a
number of these Enterprise processes which can be particularly impacted through the
telecom activity and the model of telecom service provisioning/delivery shall be
enumerated and discussed.

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10.5 Upstream Management

10.5.1 Introduction
Over the last 20-25 years, the EPU has undergone significant organization change, largely
influenced and driven by political and legislative policy, generally moving away from the
vertically integrated, government owned monopolistic organization responsible for the
generation, transmission, distribution and supply of electricity towards a competitive electricity
market. This tendency described in section 8.2 has significant impact on the strategic decisions
of the EPU as to the way to provision telecom and IT services:

The EPU is a commercial organization whose goal may not only be delivering reliable and
secure electricity but generating profit through diversified activities and pay dividends.
The stake holders are no longer the state representatives but also the Parent Company, the
Investors, the Customers and the Regulation authorities.

In such a context, the tasks of Upstream Management for Telecom Services widen up
considerably. These cover all the processes resulting in the adoption of a particular telecom
service delivery mode and the preparation of financing, facilities, organization, resources and
partnerships for the activity to be sustainable, economically viable and approved by the
different stakeholders.
Figure 10.9 presents the main constituents of Upstream Management in the Utility Telecom
context and figure 10.10 a typical process flowchart and organization for these tasks.

Deploy &
Adjust

Business Development
Service Portfolio Evolution
Service Migration Planning

Build Service Offer

Build Capability

Upstream
Management

Build Strategy

Strategy &
Planning

Operations

Enterprise Processes

Figure 10.9 Upstream Management in the uTOM

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Figure 10.10 Upstream Management Process Flowchart and Organization

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10.5.2 Policy Definition & Business Planning

Telecom policy definition and business planning covers executive level decision making
processes that lead to the long term plan (5-10 years) for the evolution of telecom service
provisioning in the EPU. Its primary aim is to outline a clear direction and framework for how
a competitive telecom solution can be provided within the operating environment, thereby
ensuring:

Reliable and secure accomplishment of the EPU primary mission (e.g. power generation,
coordination, and delivery) thus reducing the risks of human accidents, losing customers,
sanctions and penalties, and costly damage to power system assets,

Shareholders satisfaction (usually long term growth) and good mid term returns
(dividends) at the EPU level,

Regulators approval (essentially delivering value for money to the end customer).

The strategic policy on telecom services must allows the EPU to define the focus and strategic
direction of the business over the next five year period:

Determine how the organization will deliver the services based on its existing resources
(both capital and people),

Define any requirement for the cessation or diversification of existing services, identify
opportunities or requirements for the creation of new services,

Quantify any subsequent investment necessary to fulfil such objectives.

The strategic policy for telecom services depends upon a number of factors and information
from a variety of sources. Some important factors and issues are enumerated hereafter:
Parent Company Policy (and Business Plan) This will define the general framework and the
orientations to be taken towards telecom services (e.g. diversify activities to other profitable
businesses)
Regulatory Context Telecom activities of the EPU must respond to the requirements of any
Regulatory and Legislative frameworks to which it is bound. In the case of U-Telco business
operations this includes the Telecommunications Regulator as well as the Energy Regulator.
Regulatory constraints may have significant impact on the availability of funds to develop the
telecom facilities, may create new security or safety obligations leading to extended telecom
services or refurbishments and renewals, may favour certain delivery modes to others through
CAPEX/OPEX distinctions, and may present an obstacle to the integration of corporate
enterprise services with the operational services.
Organizational Opportunities ICT Convergence, the technological trend removing the
boundaries between information processing/storage and exchange and the similarity in the
required skills is driving utilities to consider the merger of these organizations bearing in mind
that the cost and effort saving is to be balanced against potential issues regarding certain
processes and work constraints. Such a merger between IT and telecom activities can greatly
impact the strategic orientations for telecom service delivery.

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Similarly, the cost and effort for maintaining two independent telecom organizations within the
utility perimeter to fulfil operational and corporate enterprise communications is driving many
utilities to consider their merger.
Market Opportunities Revenue Generating Commercial telecom involvement through UTelco business are often envisaged by EPUs every time that major enhancements are planned
in the telecom infrastructure. Setting up a U-Telco business however necessitates the
preparation of a distinct business case based on detailed potential market surveys and
opportunity identification which is beyond the scope of the present document. Combining the
essentially non-profit mission of operational telecom service provision with the profitoriented commercial service in a same organization may rise a number of organizational and
regulatory issues that need to be carefully analyzed (e.g. business development in a competitive
environment without compromising the critical service constraints of the power system, or
access to financing for operational service development while maintaining competitive
commercial activity).
Strategic Partnership Opportunities Many utility services require coverage, workforce or
investment which is economically unfeasible for the EPU on its own. Resource sharing (cable
infrastructure, radio coverage infrastructure, emergency mobile network, or maintenance team)
between multiple utilities or multiple critical Service Users can be a way around this
economical obstacle.
Investment Context Financing the deployment of a large telecom infrastructure can be
performed through the companys own funds, or through international loans. This latter type of
financing cannot be applied to an essentially OPEX mode of telecom service delivery (e.g.
procuring telecom services). Similarly, obtaining financial support for developing the network
for competitive commercial services requires demonstrated Return on Investment, which
may not be required for financing operational service development. Combining the two may
cause difficulties for obtaining either type of financing, unless clearly separated.
Resource Context As previously stated, asset ownership, in particular optical fibres across
transmission lines, is a determining factor on the selection of service provisioning modes and
on cost assessment. It is also a determining factor for the feasibility and interest of U-Telco
involvement and hence of the envisaged strategic orientations.
Another highly decisive resource in the EPU telecom environment is the RF Spectrum.
Assuring that adequate RF spectrum is allocated (or maintained) for the operational usage of
Utilities is a major field of national and international action in many parts of the world in
particular in the US and Australia. Gaining (or keeping) access to specific parts of the
spectrum is a political issue necessitating power utilities to voice their concerns collectively to
legislators and regulators (e.g. UTC). Access (or lack of access) to adequate RF spectrum
highly impacts the mode of delivery for mobile services and power distribution network
communications.
Skills and Human Resource Context Unavailability of sufficient workforce and/or skills
for scaling up the telecom activity may lead to the merger of IT and corporate enterprise
services with the operational telecommunications, or to outsourcing/ contracting.

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10.5.3 Strategic Deployment and Tactical Adjustments

These tasks which have been collectively named Building Capability transform strategic
decisions on the provisioning of EPU telecommunication services into deployed solutions.
They comprise a great amount of project and contract management. Strategic deployment may
cover all or part of the following processes depending upon the Utility organization, regulatory
context and the scope, scale and type of service delivery which is envisaged:
Building a Business Case Building a business case is at the frontier between strategic
decision making and deployment. It transforms the business plan into a detailed project usable
for investment appraisal and obtaining required approvals.
The business case in general includes the benefits of the proposed project for the EPU, the
estimated cost, the analysis of Return on Investment and the risks related to the project. In
Utility telecom projects, it may also include the risks associated to not deploying the
proposed project as well as the assessment of alternatives.
Increasingly, the high level of necessary investments leads to envisage ways to optimize the
usage of assets, when regulatory issues can be overcome, through the integration of other
services (e.g. corporate enterprise) or revenue generating U-Telco type services.
Building Organizational Capability Telecom workforce exist to some extent in all EPUs. It
may form a specific organization or incorporated into other operational entities. Organizational
changes related to strategic deployments are often the result of major changes in the scope and
scale of the delivered services. This may comprise technological change for which the
workforce is not skilled and cultural changes needing time to be assimilated (e.g. formal
relationships). Change in organization necessitates prior preparation of formal operational
management processes as described in a further section.
The organizational change may be the change of service provisioning mode from procured
telecom services to an EPU-operated dedicated network or vice versa. It can also be the change
from an operations-incorporated activity into a multi-user internal Service Provider) or
affiliated service company.
Building organizational capability may require new skills and more staff than existing in the
present organization. This issue can be solved through:
Employing workforce with required skills
Extensive technical training programs
Outsourcing skilled workforce
Contracting certain support activities (e.g. maintenance)
Deploying Network Infrastructures Rehabilitation projects leading to major change of
scale and scope of the EPU dedicated telecom network are often contracted in a turn-key
manner. Contracting of these projects often comprising design optimization, procurement,
installation and commissioning of all necessary equipment, provision of power supplies, survey
of existing facilities and integration with the existing, necessitates precise specification
covering responsibilities and liabilities of each party.
Telecom network deployment projects are rarely greenfield installations, rehabilitation
projects and their network-wide surveys are often the opportunity to review the lifecycle issues

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of existing equipment: compare the costs of replacement of old equipment with the cost of
upgrade and maintain. Timely replacement of old telecom assets may allow substantial
economy on operating expenditure (spare parts, obsolescence management, site interventions
and repairs, etc.) in addition to enhanced functionalities and performance.
A major issue in large-scale telecom network rehabilitation projects is the migration of
operational services from the existing network to the target network with minimal and
scheduled service interruptions.
Building Service Contracts Contracting of services for the deployment of network
infrastructure and management tools, and/or operation, maintenance and support necessitates
precise specification. If turn-key implementation projects are often well specified, precise and
covering responsibilities and liabilities of each party, service contracts are often poorly
defined. Service contracts are often based upon Service Level Agreements (SLA) describing
the engagements of the contractor to intervene upon encountered anomalies in constrained
time: this contractual time defines the grade of the SLA (e.g. gold, premium, diamond, etc.).
The contractor must provide people, organization, knowhow, tools and process. However, the
responsibility of the contractor, who has not designed the system, has not chosen and procured
the equipment, and has not decided to maintain rather than to replace old assets, cannot be
extended to the proper operation of the system with an acceptably low down-time. He can just
guarantee to intervene in contracted time limit with skilled staff. Coordinating the contracts for
equipment procurement, network implementation and operation & maintenance can prove to
be extremely hard, leaving gaps in the overall responsibility.
The liability of the contractor is another important issue. In general, the level of sanction
cannot cover the potential loss: risk sharing cannot be back-to-back.
Building organizational capability may also result in the need to outplace existing staff
previously involved with that particular service into the contractors workforce. This delicate
human resource issue needs to be taken into account and treated at the upstream management
level prior to the change. Moreover, it should be noted that the use of external resources in
whichever scheme is indeed a way to acquire rapidly and flexibly the required skills for
introducing new technologies, but the obtained skill and experience is not sustained in the
company. Outplacement of skills and experience into external contractor companies is often an
irreversible process and may represent a loss of control and capability in telecommunications,
rendering the EPU dependent of its contractor.
Deploying Management Tools & Processes Building organizational capability requires also
the definition and application of new operational processes which will be appropriate for the
new scope and scale of activity. These are described in a further section on operational
management.
Deploying management tools, beyond the vendor-specific equipment configuration and
management platforms, represents an investment that many utilities are at present finding
necessary. These tools consist of on-line and off-line information systems allowing interactions
with the network infrastructure, with Service Users, with Service Providers and across the
management organization. They include service desks, network and service configuration
management data base, alarm and event management platforms, performance monitoring
systems, incident management and work order dispatch systems, dynamic route tracking

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systems, security management and intrusion detection systems, etc. These IT platforms and
applications are described in section 10.7 further in the document.
Management tools employed in small and simple telecom networks are often trivial, homemade and may have marginal cost of maintenance. However, scaling up the network and
formalizing the processes necessitates more elaborate, complex tools which represent cost and
effort to deploy and to maintain.
Deployment Phasing and Migration plan An important task in transforming business plans
and policies into deployed solutions is the elaboration of a phased deployment plan describing
the step-by-step migration from the existing situation to the target solution. The deployment
plan may in this way be extended over some years depending upon a number of parameters:
Business plan requirement
User requirements anticipated in the Service Catalogue/ Roadmap (see next section),
Lifecycle of existing telecom assets on the network,
Investment plan and availability of funds,
Deployment capability and skills
Power delivery constraints and minimal disturbance planning
Validation and Feedback The process of deploying a telecom solution allows the practical
validation of the long term policy and its related strategic decisions. Parameters and factors
which have not been taken into account and hypotheses which turn out to be invalid are in this
manner identified. The feedback can be used to adjust the business plan and the strategic
orientations. The deployment process must use previously defined metrics (KPI) and devise
measurement capability to validate strategic decisions.
On the other hand, operational management teams can provide, through their processes
described further, valuable feedback used for identifying:

Asset usage and potential optimization

Asset replace or maintain requirements based on operating costs
Existing service delivery costs
Service contractors and supplier performance,
Security reinforcement requirements, etc.

Tactical Adjustment EPU communication service requirements are not static and evolve in
time. Anticipating new service requirements is described in the next section on Service Offer,
however adjusting the capabilities of the network (or provisioning contract) in terms of
coverage, bandwidth and network in order to meet encountered requirements is to be treated
with a higher reactivity. System and process upgrades and optimizations are performed within
the perimeter of the approved yearly budget. This is generally carried out through setting
projects and following their deployment using the operational management or contractor
workforce. The scope may cover optimization, corrective action, upgrade/renewal of
equipment and firmware upgrade.

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10.5.4 Business Development, Service Offer and Service Migrations

If policy definition and business planning were assimilated to the decision to set up a restaurant
at a certain location, assessing the catering mode (e.g. served at table, self-service, fast-food,
etc.) and looking after legal issues, then strategic deployment would be employing staff,
purchasing equipment and preparing the premises accordingly. In this case, this section would
be about the content of the menu, attributing prices to different items and adjusting the menu in
time to correspond to customer tastes and preferences.
In the Telecom Operator world, this is called Telecom product marketing and lifecycle
management and is mainly related to market survey.
In the EPUs operational telecom context, building the Service Offer corresponds to the
analysis of user application requirements, grouping of constraints and attributes into different
categories of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and hence to build a Service Catalogue.
Building the telecom service catalogue also comprises the determination of service prices
based upon the initial network investments (cost of building the capability) and operating costs
(operational management cost), this latter also including all external costs due to suppliers and
contractors. The manner in which these costs are converted into service prices are governed by
the profit strategy set up by the Business Plan (Strategy Building).
Pricing of services may be used for direct invoicing of services to the users or often for the
repartition of expenses:

Between internal and external users

Between operational and corporate users
or between different operational entities

As for the restaurant menu, the communication service catalogue needs to be updated
according to encountered and anticipated changes in the EPUs applications. Typically,
SCADA applications are in most EPUs migrating from serial point-to-point communication
channels to Ethernet-based TCP/IP networking. This change, together with other applications
migration to Ethernet, is reducing considerably the requirement for serial point-to-point
communications, but increasing sharply the requirement for time-controlled wide area
Ethernet. The service catalogue must therefore be adjusted correspondingly, leading to the
deployment of adequate capabilities in terms of network, management tools and skills.
Service migration planning is often to be phased according to a number of different factors:

Application asset lifecycle and migration plan

Extent of required infrastructure change and corresponding investment plan
Deployment capability for the migration and readiness of the organization
Other planned changes and extensions, allowing a grouped migration project, reducing
costs and service interruptions

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10.6 Operational Management

Operational Management consists of operating the telecom services, the network and its related
resources in the day-to-day manner. It covers the current relationships of the service providing
entity with its customers and provider/contractors as well as the processes necessary for
delivering telecom services as represented in the figure hereafter.

Upstream
Management

Customer / User

Customer / User Relationship

Service Management
Resource Management
Provider / Contractor Relationship

Enterprise Processes
Provider / Contractor

Initialize

Deliver

Get Paid

Provide Support

Figure 10.11 Utility Telecom Operational Management

The Operational management processes can be further related to an operational lifecycle track
categorizing them into four types:

Fulfillment (Fu) Setting up and initialization of different schemes (users, services,

channels, tools, etc) based upon pre-established agreements and rules.

Assurance (As) Running the schemes set up previously in order to deliver the
communication services.

Support (Su) Providing a response to different enquiries and requests for service
including the maintenance services

Accounting (Ac) Determination and recovery of costs related to the delivery of telecom
services to different Utility-internal or external Service Users according to rules which are
set by the Upstream Management processes, monitoring the usage of communication
resources according to contracted conditions and recovering of network revenues to settle
the operational expenditure.

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10.6.1 Customer/User Relation Management

This process involves all the different interactions that the Utility Telecom Service Provider
must fulfil in order to obtain the satisfaction of its internal or external customers. Some
constituents of this process are listed below:
10.6.1.1 Service Enquiry Desk (Su)
Service Desk is the interface point for all User relations. In many cases, the service desk in the
Utility Telecom organization takes the form of telephone and/or e-mail, although web-based
automated service desk is also employed.
It is current practice, however, that in many utilities, the Service User bypasses the service
desk, calling directly the technical staff, hence making it very difficult for the support
organizations to keep track of their service calls and to justify their required resources through
their load statistics. The bypassing of service desk in Utility Telecom services is often cultural
and due to historical relationship of users and the provider staff in previous operation schemes
(telecoms embedded in the operational activity) and educational effort is required to establish
the use of the service desk.
The Service Desk tracking of User issues is also a valuable tool for the survey and monitoring
of User satisfaction, providing statistical data for the analysis of services, resources and the
evolutions of User expectations.
10.6.1.2 User Order Handling (Fu)
User order handling is the process of initializing a new instance of service contract with a
User/Customer based upon a pre-defined SLA. The user entity, in general, transmits a written
(e.g. through e-mail) Customer Order (CO) to request the creation of a new connectivity based
upon an existing service type which is known and pre-characterized by the Telecom Service
Provider.
For example, a request may concern the creation of SCADA IEC104 connectivity between a
given substation RTU and the Control Centre. SCADA IEC104 communication service being
part of the standard service catalogue, the Service Provider knows the interface type and the
characteristics of the circuit as well as the exact terms of the Service Level Agreement (SLA)
concerning this service.
If the requested service does not correspond to a standard service catalogue SLA, then it is
necessary to define previously between the User entity and the Service Provider entity an
appropriate SLA defining interface type, throughput (or capacity), time constraints,
availability, security and integrity constraints, fault tolerance, service restore time, etc.
User order handling comprises the following tasks:
Comprehend user requirements, determine feasibility and appropriate standard SLA
Register the new user service for inventory, support, SLA monitoring and accounting
purposes
Transmit a Service Initialization Request (SIR) including SLA attributes to the
Service Management layer (Service Configuration & Activation)
Notify the User (Acknowledge and date of availability)
10.6.1.3 User Change Management (Fu)
User Change Management concerns the telecom providers handling of all Customer/User
Change Requests. A user change request is in general a written demand concerning an existing

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connectivity to modify its throughput, quality, interface type or routing. The change may be
feasible from the telecom providers Operation Support System or may require field
intervention. In both cases, user change management process must include time coordination
for performing the requested modifications, and in the latter case, also site access coordination
for the field intervention staff.
10.6.1.4 User Problem Handling (As)
The telecom provider must comprehend the user problem expressed through the service desk
generally by telephone, create a trouble ticket and manage it up to the resolution of the problem
and closing of the ticket. Proper management of user problems and an adequate method for
their tracking and reporting is essential in a formal user/provider relationship.
10.6.1.5 User QoS/SLA Management (As)
The telecom provider must monitor the QoS for the communication service and elaborate a
User Dashboard which allows quality reporting to the User/Customer. The measured quality is
compared to the contracted SLA and violations are managed. User SLA monitoring allows the
notification of users and fast resolution of quality degradations. Critical services such as
protection relay communications can in this way avoid major application-level incidents and
consequent contingencies.
10.6.1.6 Customer/User Entity Invoicing & Settlement (Ac)
Customer relationship management includes also the creation of invoices for each user entity
(e.g. SCADA, Protection, Surveillance, etc.) based on the usage data collected at the Service
Management level and on pre-established service pricing as defined in the Upstream
management process. Managing customer entity invoice enquiries is also part of this process.

10.6.2 Communication Service Management Process

Communication Service Management covers all the processes necessary for the utility telecom
provider to deliver different services to its users employing owned and/or contracted resources.
10.6.2.1 Service Configuration & Activation (Fu)
Once a new instance of user service contract is initialized, it is necessary to design, configure
and activate the service. In a small integrated delivery scheme, Customer Order Handling and
Service Configuration and Activation can be integrated into a same process, i.e. the Customer
Order is translated into a Service Order implicitly. In a more general, larger context, a Service
Initialization Request (SIR) including SLA attributes is transmitted to the Service
Configuration & Activation process. This process is in charge of designing the solution which
fulfils the quality requirements. It shall comprise the association of different connections, the
allocation of specific parameters, the choice between different modes of communication
(multiplexed, switched, different IP network planes, priority assignments and route resilience)
based on the prior knowledge of network connection availability and time performances to
meet the specified SLA requirements. A Resource Order comprising design attributes is
transmitted to the internal Network Resource Management layer (Bandwidth & Capacity
Provisioning) and/or external Resource Provider (for procured capacity). When the required
resources are available, the Service Configuration & Activation implements the end-to-end
customer service, performs end-to-end tests, registers the new service in the Service
Configuration Data Base (Service Inventory & Configuration Management), and activates the
service.
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10.6.2.2 Incident Management (As)

Incident Management in the EPU context is often treated as a merged Service and Network
Management process when communication services are delivered exclusively (or almost
exclusively) through internal resources. For the sake of generality, here we distinguish Service
Incident Management (Service Problem Management) and Network (or Resource) Problem
Management.
Service Incident Management comprises essentially the creation and closure of Trouble Tickets
when a service problem is encountered by the User (User Problem Handling) or notified by the
Network Problem Management (through fault detection and service impact analysis). The
Service Incident Management shall keep track of Service Problems, shall assess the impact on
the User (service lost or only impacted, e.g. loss of resilience), and shall follow up to the
resolution, determining the restoration time and the down-time for the service.
Incident Management is a normal time process which can switch into a Disaster
Management mode when the extent of the incident (or incidents) takes extraordinary
dimensions. The boundary between Service Incident management and Network Resource
Problem Management in this case disappears, giving an overall crisis management cell with
close links to the field maintenance organization.
10.6.2.3 Service Quality Management (As)
Assuring the Quality of Service delivered to the Users comprises different tasks:
Produce Availability and Service Continuity plans
Assess Service Resilience & Survivability
Produce Time Performance, Traffic & Throughput Objectives in relation to SLA
obligations
Monitor end-to-end Quality of Service and produce Performance Reports
Detect service degradations through monitoring and through User Problem Handling
Analyze Quality issues and report to Incident Management
Service Quality Management sets up appropriate measurement tools and detection mechanisms
in order to detect degradations before they impact the User applications.
10.6.2.4 Service Change Management (Su)
Service Change Management is the process continuing the User Change Management already
described. It translates a User request for change into a series of steps employing standardized
methods and procedures ensuring minimal disruption of services. In conjunction with the User
and with the Network Change Management, a change planning schedule is defined together
with a scenario which may include intermediate steps to avoid service interruptions. In the
EPU context, the request for change may also be initialized by a change of the EPU owned
infrastructure (e.g. the power network structure modified due to some new substations being
added). In fact, the EPU being at the same time the communication service end-user and the
telecom provider entitys transmission infrastructure provider, it is sometimes difficult to fully
formalize the provider/user relationship concerning change management.
10.6.2.5 Service Inventory & Configuration Management (Su)
In its simplest form, Service Inventory in Utility telecoms is the set of telecom drawings and
tables which represent the logical interconnections related to each application (e.g. SCADA
RTU communications or operational voice network).
In a larger scale network, this is the information base containing all provisioned (or delivered)
logical interconnection services together with their attributes, specific parameters and
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requirements, supporting sub-networks and downtime/restore obligations (Service

Configuration Management Data Base, S-CMDB).
Service configuration management is process of keeping track of all services in a configuration
data base. There may be a close coupling (or identity) between Service Configuration
management and the Network Resource allocations across a Utility-owned network, performed
in Network Configuration management.
10.6.2.6 Service Policing & Usage Metering (Ac)
Services are delivered to the User with certain capacity and throughput. Multiplexed circuits
are limited in capacity by the interface and circuit allocation fixing the network bandwidth
usage. However, Ethernet-based and IP services interfaced at high rates (e.g. 100Mbps) may
require service policing limiting the traffic handling capability of the User interface well below
the interface maximal capability. This is essential for avoiding the saturation of the network
plane to which the service is allocated and therefore the quality of service contracted through
each SLA. Service policing is the process of limiting the throughput associated to each service
which can be increased without physical intervention at site on Users request (User Change
Management process).
Moreover, the Telecom Service Provider must capture the cost of service according to prior
Service Pricing performed in the Upstream Management tasks (establishment of the Service
Catalog & Pricing). Even if no internal cost settlement is performed, the estimation of the cost
of service per user entity still provides valuable data which can be an important aid to decisionmaking.

10.6.3 Network Resource & Infrastructure Management

10.6.3.1 Bandwidth & Capacity Provisioning (Fu)
A Resource Order issued by Service Configuration & Activation is processed by the Network
Bandwidth & Capacity Provisioning. This process allocates network bandwidth and/or capacity
across multiplexed or switched sub-networks subject to resource availability and keeps track of
resource usage and capacity. The allocated resource capacity is registered and managed by the
Network Configuration Management described as another process in this layer. Similarly, the
Capacity & Bandwidth Provisioning is in charge of recovering liberated bandwidth when a
service is discontinued.
10.6.3.2 Network Problem Management (As)
Network Problem Management is the process that manages network incidents (A `problem'
being an unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents). Network incidents can be
reported through the Fault Management (equipment alarms), or through the Service Incident
Management, or through Performance Management processes. Network Problem Management
shall localize and diagnose the root cause of network anomalies using different Management
System components (Element Managers, Overall Event Management Systems, Performance
Monitoring Systems, etc.) and shall identify a work-around or a permanent resolution for the
problem. It shall issue appropriate work orders towards the Field Maintenance teams if
corrective action at field is required. The objective of Network Problem Management is to
minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems caused by network anomalies and to
prevent the recurrence of incidents. When the dimensions or extents of network problems grow
substantially, this process shall merge with the Service Incident Management into a Disaster
Management process.

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10.6.3.3 Network Performance Management (As)

Network Performance Management is the assuring that the communication resources delivered
to the service layer meet the performance objectives set for the particular class of connection.
In particular, the time constraints, availability performance and throughput for each type of
network connection must be assessed and monitored. Any performance degradations must be
reported as a network incident (or event) for escalation towards the Problem Management.
10.6.3.4 Network Fault Management (Su)
Managing network faults and alarms is the most basic task for maintaining the EPU
telecommunication network resource in operational state. This is generally performed through
dedicated Element Managers associated to each type of equipment and possibly an SNMPbased umbrella management system, collecting alarm information from different types of
equipment constituting the network infrastructure. Network Fault Management is the principal
source of information for the Problem Management process allowing the localization and
analysis of network anomalies. A particularly useful complement to equipment fault and alarm
collection is the capability to determine Service Impacts of network faults which enable linking
this process directly with Service Incident Management. Network faults collected through the
fault management process originate from different layers of network infrastructure often with
overlay architecture (e.g. multiplexers and switches communicate over transmission equipment
which connect over a fiber connectivity composed of cable segments, etc.). Proper
visualization of alarms in an overlay mode facilitates the task of root cause analysis described
in Network Problem Management.
10.6.3.5 Disaster Management (As)
Basically this is the same process as Incident Management and Problem Management but in a
situation of multiple critical incidents related to a same cause such as storm, flood, major
breakdown, or attack. When a disaster situation is declared, the applicable management process
switches from the current incident management to a special process with particular tools, staff
duty schemes and process flow, giving a primary role to infrastructure support with priorities
based upon the different services continuity and criticality constraints.
10.6.3.6 Network Configuration Management (Su)
Network Configuration Management is the Resource counterpart of the Service Inventory &
Configuration Management described earlier. It is in charge of keeping an updated view of all
assets, their configurations and interactions across the network through the Network
Configuration Management Data Base (N-CMDB). The N-CMDB must in particular label all
assets and links with unique Identifiers and keep track of asset information (versions,
ownerships, documentations, factory serial numbers and acceptance tests, etc.). Configuration
management is in charge of ensuring that no modifications or additions, removals or
replacements are performed without prior notification and approval. In particular, this process
is in permanent coordination with Change Management process and Field Works to assure that
the records in the CMDB remain correct at all times. Regular reviews with planning and
change management processes allow the Configuration Management to establish different
projection views of the network infrastructure (e.g. the network configuration as running today,
after the current works, by the end of the on-going project, by the end of the planned
transformations, etc.).

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10.6.3.7 Network Change Management (Su)

Network Change Management is the companion process of Service Change Management. In
conjunction with Network Configuration Management, this process ensures that all network
changes (add, modify, remove, replace) are performed using standard methods and procedures
and with minimal disruption of services. In particular, the impact of works on existing services,
intermediate steps, authorizations and time scheduling for service interruptions must be
performed in coordination with Service Change Management and the impacted users.
10.6.3.8 Network Maintenance (Su)
Field maintenance of the telecom network infrastructure is the most demanding part of the
provision telecom services through internal network resources. Field maintenance requires
managing a relatively important workforce and logistics, depending on the number and
geographical dispersion of sites. The required intervention time of the maintenance staff
determines the geographical radius that can be allocated to a same maintenance base. If the
number of sites in this radius and consequently the expected workload is too low, then one of
the following solutions must be envisaged:
Share the maintenance base with other telecom infrastructures through contracting of
field works to an external multi-customer service contractor
Share the maintenance base with other EPU field activities (e.g. protection, SCADA,
substation, etc.).
The first solution results in a fair level of telecom skills but generally require costly electrical
certifications and trainings for the non-EPU external maintenance staff.
The second solution results in a relatively lower telecom specialization (multi-skill staff) but
with all required electrical certifications and trainings.
10.6.3.9 Asset Lifecycle & Spare Management (Su)
Asset Lifecycle management is the process that keeps track of the state of all equipment and
infrastructure components constituting the telecommunication facilities of the Utility telecom
provider (ordered, received, under test, live, under repair, withdrawn, etc.). This also includes
all Information Systems and IT platforms used for the management of the service and of the
network. Asset Lifecycle management in coordination with different equipment suppliers, must
anticipate on the end-of-life of equipment and the non-availability of spare parts and must
constitute stocks of spares as necessary. It must also keep inventory of non-allocated
equipment and spares dispersed among different maintenance centres and spare stores.
10.6.3.10
IT Tools Management (Fu+As+Su)
Managing telecom service and network increasingly employs information systems and IT
platforms as described in section 9.6, some of which have already been mentioned above.
The associated IT governance and management is not something with which EPU telecom staff
is generally familiar. Integrated IT and Telecom Service Provider entities are clearly
advantaged in this respect and already possess the required methods, processes and skills.
Managing dedicated IT is extensively treated in ITIL (see appendix) and the issue is a general
one across the EPU. We therefore do not focus on this particular point. Some particularly
important points are however reminded:
Software Release & License Management
Service Support Contracts for constituent Applications and Firmware
Security & Patch Management
Software Documentation & IT Configuration Management
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10.6.3.11
Estimate cost of running the network infrastructure (Ac)
This operations management of the Utility telecom service provision must keep track of its
running costs. This will in turn allow the upstream management to define the service prices for
the service catalogue or to define the basis for cost repartition between internal user entities.
The cost estimation must include the running costs for the associated management IT tools.

10.6.4 Provider/Contractor Relationship Management Process

External Providers and Contractors (P/C) are increasingly employed in the telecom provision
process of the EPU. Some of the major cases of their use are as follows:
Field Maintenance & Support
Special Communication Services (e.g. satellite & mobile services)
Point-to-point bulk connectivity where the EPU does not have infrastructure
Operation, Administration & Maintenance of the whole network
Individual skilled worker to be integrated in the EPU telecom entity organization
10.6.4.1 P/C Service Contracts (SLA/OLA) Setting and Adjustment (Fu)
This process comprises the selection of contractors, determining the way they shall interact
with the provision process and consequently setting up the contractual content of their services
through SLAs.
10.6.4.2 Providers/ Contractors Performance Management
The performance of external P/C must be monitored against the contractual SLA. Any nonconformity and degradation must be tracked and reported for resolution with the P/C. In
particular, leased circuits, dark fibre and bulk capacity need to be monitored carefully as they
shall directly impact the performance of the communication services delivered to Users and
may result in the non-respect of the telecom providers own SLA obligations.
10.6.4.3 Provider/ Contractor Problem Reporting (As)
Performance monitoring process described above may lead to reporting of a problem, as would
also a number of other situations. In general, when external P/C is used in the Operations of the
Utility Telecoms then it is necessary to define the process for reporting and resolution of their
corresponding anomalies.
10.6.4.4 P/C Support Management (Su)
The Utility telecom provider must support its external providers and contractors and respond to
their contractual requests. Some typical P/C support management issues in the EPU context
concern
EPU Site Access Permits,
Security clearance for contractor staff
Electrical environment safety training & certification
10.6.4.5 P/C Cost Assessment and Invoice Settlement (Ac)
This process comprises the reception of Providers/Contractors invoices and to issue settlement
orders after assessment and approval. An important task relating to Providers/Contractors
relationship is the periodic assessment of their costs and the control of their invoices in order to
maintain the overall cost of contracted services and resources at an appropriate level. This
comprises the assessment of alternatives and the periodic renegotiation of contracts.

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10.6.5 Enterprise Processes impacting Telecom Service Delivery

10.6.5.1 Security Management
The overall Security Policy of the Electrical Power Utility must be used to set up the necessary
specific security rules and to ensure their application. If the telecom provider entity is not
directly under the coverage of the Security Rules of the EPU, then it is necessary to define a
Security Policy in coordination with the EPU Security Policy. Periodic audits must be applied
to ensue that the Security level is maintained suitably.
10.6.5.2 DR/BCP
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning have already been discussed in a separate
chapter. The telecom provider entity must either be under the coverage of the EPU DR/BCP, in
which case the entity must have appropriate processes to ensure their application, or have its
own DR/BCP which must be elaborated in coordination with the EPU communication user
entities plans. Test plans and periodic audits are required to ensure that the capabilities of the
telecom provider are maintained in time. (e.g. evacuation and switch-over to back-up facilities
on disaster situation).
10.6.5.3 Human Resources and Skill Management
Maintaining a suitably trained and skilled workforce which resists the retirement of aging
employees and the mobility of the younger skilled staff is an enterprise process with significant
impact on the proper operation of the telecom provider entity.
Two issues need particular attention in the present day EPU:
 Not losing knowhow and expertise with retiring staff
 Acquiring knowhow on new technologies when deployed.

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Fulfillment
(Setting up)

User Order Handling

User Change Mgt

User/Customer

Communication
Service

Service Configuration &

Activation

Assurance
(Delivery) Running

User Problem Handling

Support
(Enquiry Supervision
& Maintenance)
Service Enquiry Desk
(User Technical Support)

User SLA Management

Incident Management

Service Inventory/Config. Mgt

Service Quality Mgt

Service Change Management

Network Problem Mgt

Network
Infrastructure &
Resources

Bandwidth & Capacity

Provisioning

Network Perf. Management

External Providers/
Contractors

P/C SLA Setting &

Adjustment

P/C Performance Mgt

(SLA Monitoring)
P/C Problem Reporting
(Supplier Relationship Mgt.)

Disaster Management

Net. Configuration Mgt

Network Change Mgt
Fault Management
Network Maintenance
Asset Lifecycle & Spare Mgt
Management Tools Support
P/C Support Management
(Site Access Permits,
Safety & Certification)

Fig 10.12 - Current Operations Process for Utility Telecom Service Delivery and Provision

122

Accounting
(Metering, Cost
Repartition, Invoicing
& Settlement)
Customer/User Entity
Invoicing & Settlement

Service Policing
& Usage Metering

Estimate running cost of

network infrastructure
(+ tools)

P/C Cost Assessment &

Invoice Settlements

10.7 Management Tools and Information Systems

10.7.1

Introduction

Building organizational capability to deliver communication services requires also the

deployment of appropriate management tools and information systems. These tools are used as
appropriate in support of the networks operation, customer relations, revenue collection and
provider relations. The size and complexity of the required management tools depend upon the
scale of the telecom activity and hence the complexity of management processes, as discussed
earlier in the chapter.
Although the great majority of EPUs have deployed dedicated vendor-specific Element and
Network Management Systems (E/NMS) allowing the supervision and maintenance of each
silo of technology, few have yet implemented wider scope management systems, enabling an
overall view of the network as well as its delivered services and assisting the management staff
to interact with it.
Figure 10.13 illustrates KEPCO management architecture as deployed in 2006 [43]. This
architecture covers the integration of SNMP managed part of the network together with alarm
management of legacy communication equipment. The architecture also includes a second
level composed of an integrated NMS as well as data structures and applications for network
documentation, fault management, work management and line configuration.

Figure 10.13 Kyushu Electric Power (KEPCO) Management Architecture [43]

123

10.7.2

Element & Network Management Systems

Although the present chapter's focus is on tools covering the overall infrastructure, the service
and the user/provider interactions, and therefore beyond the vendor sub-system management, it
should be noted that the basic level of management tools presently employed in the majority of
EPUs remains the vendor-specific, dedicated Element and Network Management Systems.
These systems cover Fault, Configuration and Performance Management for a single-vendor
telecom subsystem in an in-depth and optimized manner. In particular, these systems allow an
adequately trained maintenance engineer to perform preventive and corrective maintenance of
fibre cores as well as board-level fault diagnostics, read and modify equipment configurations
and program end-to-end connections across the uniform sub-system with the required
protection mechanisms. Dedicated Element and Network Management Systems are widely
documented by telecom equipment suppliers. In this section we rather focus on tools beyond
the vendor sub-system management, covering the overall infrastructure, the service and the
user/provider interactions.
Fibre maintenance systems are specific SCADA systems based on OTDR measurements
performed on dedicated pilot fibres or in-traffic fibres in order to detect change of
characteristics or to localize damage. These systems allow a decrease of the fibre down-time
and hence improve the overall availability. They improve also the efficiency of the
maintenance process and work scheduling.
A particular category of network management systems which are increasingly employed in the
EPU operation-related environment is those which manage IP/MPLS and Ethernet packet
networks. These tools may be vendor-specific or more general monitoring platforms and allow
the following tasks in addition to managing elements fault and configuration:

Discovery of devices with an IP address,

Route tracking for packets belonging to each virtual network
Traffic load estimation on devices and links
Cyber-security attributes and events (from router firewalls, etc.)

A number of Japanese EPUs have made particular developments for their IP Network
Management [44]. The objective of these developments has been the achievement of smoother
operation and maintenance through an adapted graphical display of network states (VPNs and
Label Switched Paths, LSPs) enabling a visual perception of route information. Additionally,
the network management system can be operated with graphical operation windows and the
O&M staff can set up routers and L2 switches through wizards without wrong settings and
operations. This function requires only simple operations for end-to-end settings, and facilitates
the system expansion.

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10.7.3

Operation Support Systems (OSS)

The Operation Support System (OSS) consists of on-line and off-line information systems and
corresponding applications supporting the operational management organization in its
interactions and in its visualization of the network infrastructure, current problem solving,
incident management and service monitoring tasks. Some particularly important functional
requirements for a telecom OSS in the EPU environment are listed below [43], [45]:
Management Function
Fault Supervision and
Problem Management
(Root Cause Analysis)

Scope

Service Monitoring

Work Order Management

Trouble Ticketing &

Incident Management

Collect alarms and events from the whole telecom network

Filter, de-duplicate, translate and correlate alarms
Enable prompt identification of the root cause of fault from
multiple alarms in an overlay of telecom technologies
Provide troubleshooting information on identified fault using
a common faults database
Notify on-duty staff of the occurrence of specific events (or
combinations)
Enable remote switching or activating of units
Mask alarms generated by work, based on work schedules
inputted in advance
Determine the impact of network faults on delivered services
Monitor the quality of delivered services and generate alert
on detecting degradation
Monitor service availability and down-time on faults and
works and generate service dashboards
Monitor the performance of SLAs
Generate periodical reports on services
Provide support for planning and adjustments of work
schedules by automatically extracting other work on
complementary pair, including work on redundant routes.
Determine the necessity of checks on service soundness
including absence of failure on redundant routes prior to the
commencement of planned work.
Support for control offices to regulate work and/or manage
the progress of work at each place responsible for
maintenance when major failures occur.
Create trouble tickets
Assign incident resolution to a particular person/department
Keep track of the incident with possible escalation
Close incident and perform statistics on resolution times
Formalized incident reporting
Monitor & report on incident resolution

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Inventory & Configuration

Information System

End-user (and customer) inventory

Service Catalogue and SLA inventory
Service inventory and provisioning
Inventory data of logical resources
Inventory data of passive and active physical resources
Inventory of application software and firmware releases and
licenses
Spare and warehouse inventory management
Supplier / Partner inventory
Capacity planning, change management and migration
planning

Figure 10.14 illustrates comprehensive management platform architecture for delivering these
OSS functions as envisaged by Japanese Utilities [43].

HMI & Terminal

Functions
New HMI

..

Line Configuration
Management

Configuration
Mgt. Support
Equipment Config.
Management

Line Design

Line Provisioning
Management

Line Planning
Task Support

New Task
Support

.. ..

..

New Functional
Component

Fault Statistics

Line Registration

Equipment
Registration

Line Planning
Registration

Contractor Control

Server Log
Collection & Analysis

VPN Route
Verification

Equipment Status
Monitoring & Analysis

Trouble-shooting
Procedure Recording

Scheduled Outage
Registration

Information Platform
Integrated
Fault
NMS
Determination
I/F

Element
Management
Systems

..

Thin Client

Workflow Engine
Service Quality
Monitoring

System Down
Determination

Task Functional
Component Group

Network
Management
Function

Online Help

Work Management
Support
Work Control

..

Electronic
Notice Board

Work Plan

..

Maintenance Task
Support
Trouble-shooting
Knowledge

Reliability Status
Management

Equipment Status
Management

Task Support
Function Group
Supervision Task Support
Service Status
Management

User
Authentication

E-mail

Remote Switching
Control

GUI

I/F
EMS
Contacts

Service Impact
Determination
I/F
I/F
EMS
Proprietary

Alarm
Masking

Performance
Monitoring

Network
Management
Data Base

I/F

I/F

I/F
EMS

I/F
EMS

SNMP

Syslog

I/F
EMS
New

I/F

Fig 10.14 Outline of functional configuration of new Network Management System [43]

126

An outline of each section of the figure is detailed below:

EMS, Integrated Network Management Function, and Network Management DB

Monitoring information from the NEs is collected by the EMS (Element Management
Systems). The Integrated NMS determines faults and identifies affected lines and services
using configuration information from the network management Data Base. Moreover, the
configuration management information in this Data Base is synchronized to the
configuration information residing in managed equipment and in the different EMS.

Task Support Functions, Functional Components, and Workflow Engine

Task support functions (such as service status and equipment status management) are used
for the supervision task. These functions are realized by the combination of various
functional components such as the system down determination function. The configuration
of these task support functions (combination of functional components) is defined in the
workflow engine based on the task flows.

Information Platform
Functional components operate based on information from the integrated NMS and
network management DB. An information platform plays the role to accommodate this
information and functional components as if they are on a common bus, to provide a
mechanism for linking functional components through loose clustering, in which
functional components are independent of each other and separated for each coarse grain.

HMI Functions and Terminal Functions

Various HMI functions such as GUI and electronic notice boards are provided for
visibility, operability and convenience.

10.7.4

Inventory & Configuration Data Base

User, Service and Network Inventory are basic information system requirements governing the
EPU telecom facility and business. In service- and resource-related areas, the inventory
information is composed of the configuration data encompassing existing assets, allocation,
implementation, installation, configuration, activation and testing of specific resources and
services. The information may be employed to meet the requirements from different processes
to alleviate specific service or resource capacity shortfalls, availability concerns or failure
conditions.
The relative importance and necessity of different inventory related activities depend indeed
upon the scale and scope of the EPU telecom delivery model. Regardless of these delivery
model considerations however, the efficiency of the inventory system (and hence the speed and
efficiency of the enterprise process) lies primarily in the accessibility of data across different
sources and different data domains and the association of these inventory information domains.
Inventory and configuration information systems are examined here in more detail in support
of efficient implementation of EPU operational processes [46].
Beside interrelationship, another important aspect of inventory information is the quality of
data. Since inventory related activities are a combination of manual and (possibly) automated
tasks, the only way to maintain high level of data quality is to incorporate respective attention
into the enterprise processes. Data quality becomes extremely important when some process

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automation is implemented at the operational level (e.g. automated service and resource
provisioning, alarm correlation, impact and root cause analysis, etc.).
Functionality of an inventory system typically includes the following features:

Inventory retrieval allows for other EPU information systems to retrieve

information from the Inventory system either through attribute matching or on a request
basis.
Inventory update notification generation of notifications for client information
systems based on changes to the inventory data (e.g. object creation, object deletion and
attribute value changes, etc.).
Inventory update A connected EPU information system may request that the
Inventory be updated according to its own data change
Inventory reconciliation The Inventory system may look for, and discover changes
of certain of its data records across other EPU information systems and consequently
updates its records, raising an exception in case of discrepancies.
Inventory information model typically a lot of detail needs to be added concerning
the entities to be managed. Specific details will depend on the particular service /
resource / technology.

In practical implementations, these basic inventory system features are always part of a broader
context which needs to be defined before the implementation. Broader context is defined by the
business requirements at initial step of an inventory project lifecycle. Business requirements
are high level use cases which originate from enterprise processes and their corresponding
expected business results.
The importance and influence of the inventory system is illustrated below:
1. Automatic generation of User Notifications The EPU telecom service provider may
be required to generate and transmit automatically advanced e-mail notifications to
customers (or end users) of a possible service outage in case of planned maintenance
actions as part of its SLA. User notification is based on service impact analysis which
can only be performed if the service to network mapping is available in the inventory
information system and its precision depends on the degree of resolution available in
the inventory system.
2. Circuit provisioning across a multivendor network The EPU telecom service provider
needs to document the creation of new circuits across a multivendor network and to
issue the corresponding work orders. A path finder application containing decision
rules needs access to inventory information in order to perform its task.
3. Root Cause Analysis Problem management in the EPU requires the identification of
the root cause of an avalanche of alarms received from many network assets at different
levels of the infrastructure. Performing this task requires the knowledge of
configurations and the relationship between the alarm generating assets, which is
recorded in the inventory information system.
A comprehensive multilevel and multi domain inventory and configuration data base fulfils
these requirements. Data models differ for each implementation due to the types of needed
entities as well as the level of detail needed for each entity in the data model.
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There are several sources of inventory information as described below.

End-user (Customer) Inventory
The user inventory maintains records of all telecom service users, their interactions with the
enterprise, any contracts established, and any other customer related- information, required to
support CRM and other processes.
While customer inventory is important for the U-Telco type of enterprise it seems that EPU can
stand here with less detail since actual customers are internal departments inside the EPU.
Instead of extended customer inventory EPU shall maintain detailed end user inventory.
Service Catalogue and SLA Inventory
The product offering (or service catalogue) inventory maintains records of all product
offerings, their interactions with the enterprise, and any other product offering related
information, required to support CRM and other processes. The product offering inventory is
also responsible for maintaining the association between customers and purchased product
offering instances, created as a result of the Order Handling processes.
EPU type of operation is not market competitive in nature but is fulfilling a demand. For that
reason product inventory can be simplified but not wholly missed out. The concept of a
product is still used in inventory system implementations as the vital point of associations for
the business.
For similar reasons, the EPU telecom provider not being generally involved in retail sales of
services (even in the great majority of U-Telco contexts), maintaining a Sales Inventory is
often not an EPU requirement.
Service Inventory and Provisioning
The service inventory maintains records of all service infrastructure and service instance
configuration, version, and status details. It also records test and performance results and any
other service related information, required to support Service Management & Operations. The
service inventory is also responsible for maintaining the association between customers
purchased product offering instances and service instances, created as a result of the Service
Configuration & Activation processes.
Service Configuration shall support aggregate customer facing services. It is necessary to see a
clear difference between services and networks/resources. Services can be viewed as being
comprised of a number of building blocks - e.g. bandwidth, security, maintenance package,
SLA, QoS, specific features e.g. voicemail, etc. Service configuration can be derived from
order details in addition to inherent business rules from service specifications and the service
view in the Service Inventory Management application.
Resource Inventory and Configuration
The resource inventory maintains records of network infrastructure comprising logical and
physical resources as well as passive resources such as cabling, cable ducts, etc. It documents
resource instance configuration, version, and status details as well as test and performance
results and any other resource related information, required to support Resource Management
& Operations. The resource inventory is also responsible for maintaining the association
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between service instances and resource instances, created as a result of the Resource
Configuration and Provisioning Management processes. Configuration and topology
information of each resource domain in the Inventory management System shall be kept
coherent with that in the resource types database (e.g. Element Manager Database). When
possible this shall be done by resource discovery applications or uploaded from dedicated
Element/Network Management Systems through update or reconciliation.
Resource Inventory is the basis for a number of important applications including spare modules
and warehouse management, capacity planning and change management and network
migration planning. These latter applications are used to discover and manage underutilized or
stranded resources including cable pairs, wiring and distribution panels, and other passive
resources.
Resource Inventory requirements also include those related to application software and
firmware releases and licenses related to telecom management or related to telecom service
delivery platforms which may (or not) be associated to more general IT asset management
information systems of the EPU.
Supplier/Partner Inventory
The supplier/partner inventory maintains records of all commercial arrangements with
supplier/partners, and any modifications to them. It also records all details of contacts with
suppliers/partners as well as commercial information, including details of supplier/partner
products and services, required to support Supplier/Partner Relationship Management. The
supplier/partner inventory is also responsible for maintaining the association between product
instances, service instances and resource instances. This inventory is particularly important for
EPUs utilizing connectivity provided by public telecom service providers where an association
between rented facilities to the EPU resource and configuration database is highly important.

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11 COST CONSIDERATIONS
Cost assessment for different modes of telecom service provisioning can only be performed in
a specific manner for a particular EPU depending upon its existing resources in terms of
infrastructure, skills, service procurement opportunities, regulatory issues and service
requirements. Similarly, as it has been stipulated in the previous sections, many hybrid
provisioning schemes combining service procurement and in-house provisioning may be
adopted to fit optimally in any particular case:

Only particular telecom services may be procured (e.g. mobile services)

Only particular telecom services may be delivered in-house (e.g. protection relay)
Access to some particular sites or zones may be through procured services (e.g. urban
sites)
Only some service or layers of infrastructure may be externally provided (e.g.
maintenance)

In the present section, we only enumerate some important cost parameters that need to be taken
into account when performing such an assessment considering three principal modes of service
provisioning which are:
Build and operate
Build and contract services
Procure service
Asset ownership investment issues on the regulatory side

The costs associated with the provision of telecom services can widely be classified into
Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operation Expenditure (OPEX). The former comprise the
costs associated to the implementation of a telecom network infrastructure, and the latter to the
running and maintaining of a telecom network or to the procurement of services. Regulatory
constraints in the deregulated environment generally render high CAPEX and low OPEX more
attractive because the expenditure on infrastructure may be declared to the regulator as an
improvement of the reliability and security of the power system and hence incorporated into
the pricing of the service. It should however be borne in mind that the same favourable
regulatory environment can end up to be an obstacle to the integration of non-operational
services (and/or commercial revenue generation through external customers) across the same
infrastructure.
Similarly, the rehabilitation of the operational telecommunication facilities can be eligible for
financing through international funds which indeed may not be used for procuring externally
provided services.
Perimeter of Communication Services and Requirements

When comparing costs and solutions, defining the perimeter of services and requirements is
often a tricky issue:
When provisioning through procured services is envisaged, utilities tend to limit their
requirements to the minimal operational services currently in use. However, when planning
to implement a dedicated infrastructure, utilities dimension the system not only for present
services but also for estimated new site extensions, new applications and estimated rise in
application bandwidth usage during the system lifetime.

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Non-operational services are generally not included in procured service cost estimations
although these services result in some cost to the utility, usually for another department
such as Deregulated Business department, or alternatively these are absorbed by a
project or maintenance group so that the true costs are not known. These are most often
planned into the dimensioning of dedicated networks.
There are often auxiliary applications and services that would be implemented if
communications were available but rarely deployed when supplementary channels need to
be procured.
When assessing procured service costs, it is usually the commercially available service
nearest to the required quality which is taken into consideration. There is often an
important gap with respect to the actual requirement meaning that the utility accepts to
lower its operational expectations. The high cost of actually meeting the operational
constraints for atypical services (if possible at all) is rarely taken into account. In the
build scenarios, however, it is considered that the operational expectation cannot be
lowered as technical solutions for meeting the constraints generally exist.
It should also be noted that quality constraints may be related to the proper operation of a
system (e.g. time latency in Protection Relays), related to the respect of certain national
regulations or international recommendations (e.g. fault tolerance), or purely cultural,
related to the behaviour of the previously employed systems or how we thought they were
behaving (e.g. invulnerable)!

Capital Expenditure

The cost assessment for the telecom infrastructure needs to be complemented with information
concerning the expected useful lifetime of the system components. Optical cable can be
expected to have a lifetime of 15-25 years, an RF tower even longer, but modern
communication equipment may need to be replaced due to unavailability of spare parts or
incompatibility with (or performance limitation of) more recent system components. The
addition of varying life factors complicates the cost assessment even more when we consider a
procured service counterpart: how to estimate the cost of a currently available commercial
service in 15-25 years time or the cost of adapting the operational applications to whatever
telecom service is available in future?
Moreover, it should be noted that the cost of optical cable, RF towers and electronic
communication equipment does not cover all the CAPEX of a Build project. Some other
important expenditure items often under-estimated are as follows:
Installation Wiring, Cable Trays, Distribution Panels,
Licenses and Right of ways
Power Supply, DC Distribution, Batteries, Back-up Generators, Fuel Tanks
Cubicles and Environment Conditioning, EMC Protection,
Management Facilities
Application interfaces and converters
The opportunity cost of outage times where critical assets such as transmission lines
need to be taken out of service for the installation of OPGW for example
Spares
Many of these items still need to be provided in a Procured Service provisioning scheme:
Customer Premise Equipment in many public telecom operators do not fulfil power system
interface requirements and is not conditioned for installation in the substation environment,

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necessitating cost provision for interface converters, multiplexers, routers and switches as well
as cubicles, DC distribution (or AC UPS for Customer Premises Equipment) and installation
items in an assessment. Moreover, if the providers scope ends outside the perimeter of the
electrical substation (e.g. for safety and security reasons), one may also need to add shelters
and links to the substation interfacing points. Alternatively the Service Provider will need to
include the cost of gaining and maintaining site access accreditation where he does need to
access electrical substations.
Operation Expenditure, Management and Operation Support

Running a dedicated telecommunication network is costly and requires different categories of

skilled workforce, organization, processes and tools as already described in the previous
chapters of the present document.
Network Management information systems and tools, as other IT systems in the Utility, can be
particularly costly to acquire and to maintain. For some more complex management tools, their
acquisition may require a certain critical size of the telecom facilities to be managed. When the
critical size is not attained in the utility, sharing these facilities with other dedicated networks
can be an attractive solution, pleading in favour of outsourcing.
Similarly, field maintenance of a network dispersed across a wide geographical area, while
respecting service restoration time constraints can lead to a great number of local maintenance
centres with skilled staff and spare parts, but under-utilized most of the time. The operational
cost can rapidly become too high to sustain. Sharing field maintenance through multi-skill
utility staff (SCADA, protection, substation, etc.) or through external service contractors can
considerably reduce this cost (i.e. build and contract services).
However, it should be noted that even a full procurement of managed telecom services does
not eliminate the cost of management and operation: referring to the uTOM model developed
in the previous chapter, the external provider relieves the utility from the process of Telecom
Resource Management (i.e. the telecom infrastructure) but still the following costs must be
taken into account when provisioning solutions are compared:
 Cost of Service Provider Relationship Management assuring that the providers
contractual obligations in terms of quality of service are met (Service Level Management)
 Cost of Service Management - adapting providers services to utility users service
requirements, e.g. through coupling of services from different providers to meet fault
tolerance and service restoration times that a single provider can assure
 Cost of Utility Customer/User Relationship Management assuring that the user is
receiving a satisfactory telecom service
It is a current mistake to assume that the external telecom Service Provider shall replace the
utility in the fulfilment of the above-mentioned tasks. This often leaves an important gap in the
service provision chain leading to an unsatisfactory service at the user level and conflict with
the external Service Provider.
A certain degree of cost sharing on operation support and management can be devised in multinational Utilities, covering EPU activities in several countries. This can typically cover a
centralized support scheme, common procurement and other administrative activities, however
often constrained by different national regulations and legislative issues, as well as different
optimal technology and provisioning schemes.

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Skill related costs

A cost item which is so often neglected when performing cost assessments is the cost of
maintaining in-house skills and expertise. A first-level superficial analysis may consider that
contracting of services (management, maintenance, full procurement of bulk capacity or
process connectivity) leads to important cost saving in that the utility no longer needs to
maintain in-house skills and skilled workforce. However, experience shows that losing skills in
the utility generally leads to the build-up of a provision monopoly for one contractor (e.g.
Telecom Service Provider), rise of service cost and degradation of service, due to the inability
of the Utility to change its Service Provider (all the knowledge of the service residing with the
external contractor to be replaced).
In some other circumstances, outsourcing of services is not for saving on skilled workforce, but
a consequence of lack of skilled workforce or the inability to capture or to maintain skilled
workforce (e.g. due to non-attractive salaries).
Finally, it should also be noted that maintaining in-house telecom skills is costly and may even
be more costly if the maintained skills are only to be used for specifying and supervising
purposes. An adequate provision of operation cost is to be allocated for training, transfer of
knowledge between generations and acquisition of new skills facing technological migration.
Risk related costs

Cost assessment of telecom services often lacks consideration of the Risk parameter even if
this is precisely the reason to envisage anything else than the normal operator service as
described throughout this document.
A Cost versus Risk assessment must examine the Liability chain from the end-user to the
end supplier and contractor. The level of liability that any external telecom supplier is willing
to accept is completely out-of-proportion with the risk that the utility may assume if the
telecom service were not to be operational at critical times. It is often recommended to set the
liability of the telecom operator as high as possible (despite the impact on the service price),
not to cover the consequences, but to assure responsiveness.
The cost of non-performance of the telecom service comprises the cost of possible damage to
EPU assets, cost related to sanctions and penalties that the EPU may have to face, as well as
the loss of image for lack of performance and its associated costs in the competitive market
environment.
Cost Comparison and Selection of the solution

In order to properly analyse different solutions which have different CAPEX and OPEX cost
considerations, it is useful to use appropriate economic models that enable valid cost
comparisons to be made. One such standard economic technique is known as Net Present
Value Analysis. In principle this technique converts a stream of future payments (OPEX costs
such as continuing telecom service fees, maintenance expenses, ongoing management
expenses, etc.) into the present (taking into account the time value of money caused by
inflation and opportunity costs) so that they can be added to CAPEX costs. This results in the
ability to directly compare different solutions with different mixes of CAPEX and OPEX costs.
It is also possible to do a sensitivity analysis for different scenarios, such as changes to the
inflation rate during the lifetime of the telecom service delivery. A simple google will find
ample references to this technique which can be easily implemented using a spreadsheet
approach, or by using Discount Cashflow tables.

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12 FURTHER ACROSS THE HORIZON

Technological prophecies in telecommunications and information related domains have often
proven to be far from correct. Breakthroughs or unexpected limitations, new market segments
or vanishing of previously promising markets, company strategies, economical and political
drivers have in the past resulted in the least probable options.
This short section can therefore only mention a few current trends which, if not deviated or
abandoned, may have significant impact on the evolution trajectory of the nature and delivery
mode of telecom services in the EPU. Many of these trends such as Advanced Metering
Infrastructures (AMI) and Smart Grid initiatives of all kinds are already well engaged but in
multiple tracks without yet any certainty as to the track (or tracks) which will in the end be
universally adopted. The following discussion can be considered as the basis for further
reflection across the power industry.
Five axes of reflection can be identified for discussing the evolution of EPU telecom service:
Power System Applications, Practices and Development Smart Grid
EPU Organization and Environment
Telecom and Internet Service Provider Environment and Service Offer
Telecom Technology Evolutions
Information Systems Evolution Cloud Computing
Subjects and domains discussed in this section may be candidate domains for further
exploration through future Working Groups in the CIGRE Study Committee D2.

12.1 Power System Evolution - Smart Grid

Worldwide concern on sustainable development in the recent years has created a number of
environmental, economic and social initiatives related to energy generation, delivery and
consumption:
Reduce the generation of energy through fossil combustibles and the production of CO2
due to energy-driven activities,
Coordinate more closely the generation, delivery and consumption of energy in order to
reduce the general need for energy production and to reduce the impact of high spot
energy prices in deregulated energy markets
An important orientation associated to these initiatives, is SmartGrid whose target is to assure
secure, reliable and optimal delivery of electrical power from generation to consumption point,
in the deregulated power environment, through an enhanced use of information and
communication technologies.

Some of the main attributes of this Smart Grid are given below. Their fulfilment relies
heavily upon the existence of secure, reliable and fast communications with wide coverage of
the concerned sites and devices:
a. Self Healing - The prompt reaction of the power network to changes, through a highly
coordinated automation system, and network-aware protection schemes for rapid
detection of faults and power restoration. These communication-intensive applications
and their service requirements have already been described in the section 3.1.

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b. Enhanced Visibility and Control - Increased security of the power delivery system
through better visibility of power flow and the network state across the interconnected,
multi-actor, competitive market. These applications covering the visibility of the
system from the remote control platforms together with new ways to organize,
synthesize, dispatch and display large amounts of collected information are already
illustrated in section 3.2.
c. Empower Consumers - Empowering the consumer means incorporating consumer
equipment and behaviour into the design and operation of the grid. This implicates
reinforced Demand Response and Load Control through information exchange
with the energy consumer and potentially the electrical appliances in consumer
premises, allowing to regulate consumption and to absorb peaks. The Advanced
Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Smart Metering programs constitute the basis for
this reinforced relationship requiring bi-directional real-time communication access
from the Service Provider to the individual domestic and industrial consumers.
d. Tolerant to physical and cyber-security attacks New utility security monitoring
solutions and their communication requirement have been discussed in chapter 5.
Security also becomes an important attribute of the communication service for utility
applications as described in section 6.6. Moreover, disaster recovery solutions such as
geographically distinct back-up control platforms, fast deployment and mobile facilities
described in chapter 7, are often part of the mitigation plan of utilities towards physical
attacks raising the issue of routing of communications to facilities, sites and staff across
the network.
e. Accommodate Green Power - The secure integration of the considerably increased
dispersed power generation, mainly large wind farms, but also energy producing
consumers (solar, wind, etc.) implicates incorporation of statistical data and
meteorological forecasts into the power dispatch program, but also reliable two-way
communications with dispersed generators constituting virtual power plants. In case of
a wind or solar farm, the local communications of the power plant are extended
through a large perimeter, sometimes hardly accessible, covering an array of tens of
individual generators.
f. Optimize Assets through Monitoring Asset and environment monitoring for an
increased lifecycle of assets without compromising system reliability has been
discussed in chapter 4.
As it can be observed, the different components enabling the smartness of the grid have
already been covered in terms of communication services in the present document. What still
remains unclear at the time of preparation of this document is the extent of deployment,
coverage and associated investment of power utilities for each of these attributes. This may
have considerable impact on the overall provisioning scheme of telecom services in the EPU.
One such scale-setting application is the Advanced Metering Infrastructure for access to
consumers. Depending on the adopted applications and their communication requirements, the
distribution utility may be driven into a procured telecom service or into building of an
extensive dedicated telecom network.
The concept of microgrids, autonomous islands comprising generation and consumption, will
redefine the Energy Management architecture and its consequent communication service
requirements, pushing the concepts of deregulated energy market down to the community
level.
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Finally the management of devices may also be considerably modified with the change of scale
in the number of smart metering devices to be monitored, evolving from a power utility type
monitoring system into concepts and platforms that mainstream telecom operators have long
employed for payphones, ADSL and cable modems.

12.2 EPU Organization and Environment

Liability and Regulatory issues

In a great number of countries the power sector has already undergone or is undergoing
important changes moving from a state-owned vertically integrated utility with a public
mission to a competitive market situation with investor-owned companies. A natural trend has
therefore been a great focus on Return on Investment with consequences on all activities which
do not contribute directly and immediately on the creation of added value. This unique
direction of attention is gradually being counter-balanced to some extent by costly incidents,
regulatory bodies directives, and liabilities: Return on Investment is being complemented by
the Risk of non-Investment.
Competitive companies will have to invest extensively in such domains as cyber-security,
surveillance and physical protection of sites and installations, primary asset condition
monitoring etc. in order to meet regulatory requirements (e.g. NERC). The safety of the
maintenance workforce is also getting renewed attention through innovative information tools
as already described in order to avoid accidents.
Continuity of supply is increasingly a requirement that is sanctioned through important
financial penalties encouraging the power company to invest in its energy management, grid
management and asset management facilities and the efficiency of its maintenance. Reliable
telecommunications in this context shall benefit as an enabler infrastructure, requiring
important investments, not necessarily to create a Return on Investment but to avoid important
consequential losses.
On the other hand, regulatory bodies encourage investment in operation-related
communications by accepting the expenditure as necessary for the security of power system
(and hence reflected into the total cost of power). This approach may impact considerably the
telecom strategies of the EPU.
Workforce and Expertise issues

Power Utility workforce is changing in distribution, skills and behaviour requiring revised
ways of operating.
Ageing Workforce Many European countries are facing workforce aging due to
demographic reasons with waves of retirement creating a loss of legacy expertise while
legacy systems and technologies still remain in operation
Shrinking Workforce Competitive strategies in companies have led to reduced workforce
and to externalization reducing their ability to conserve skills and expertise on a wide scale.
Accelerated Turnover Younger generation technical staff, increasingly do not remain a
long time in one activity, making it difficult to develop a wide knowledge and experience,
in particular where multiple disciplines are concerned (e.g. Telecoms and Protection
Relaying).

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Information and Communication technology is changing extremely fast, creating a strong

dependence on inexperienced or external workforce often unfamiliar with the power system
applications and environment. Technical options and decisions can be taken without a full
understanding of consequences.

Based on these statements two important directions of focus and investment can be identified
for power utilities in the coming years to mitigate workforce and expertise issues:
Training and simulation tools for technical workforce
Embedded intelligence in operation & maintenance tools This includes enhanced network
management and situation awareness systems and data-rich maintenance tools. Remote
assistance of field workers through enriched information exchange terminals is described in
4.6 and [12]). Some utilities are investigating into Expanded Reality for their maintenance
workforce.

12.3 Communication Service Provider Environment

a. Distribution Utilities are the largest EPU organizations (both present and potential) using
Public Communication Services, in particular for Smart Metering and Customer Access
applications. Fixed Internet Service Providers and Mobile Operators are extremely serious
contenders for this large potential market that can itself impact the service catalogue of
these operators. In the vision of Public Communication Service Providers, energy
management at customer side is only one constituent of a far larger set of services
covering Home Automation, information delivery and general accessibility.
b. IP Convergence of Services It is at present established that all fixed services provided by
Public Operators can be (and shall be) delivered at lower cost over IP (even if still
generally with lower reliability). Fixed communication services in future will be
exclusively delivered over IP.
c. Short life-cycle services Added-value services have much shorter lifecycles and under
the pressure of market and competition need to be modified continuously. It becomes
impossible for a Utility to base any of its long life-cycle applications on the usage of
these services. Otherwise, the EPU should be prepared to modify its deployed applications
accordingly.
d. Separation of Service Platforms (voice, Internet, file transfer, video, etc.) In order to
allow ever faster design of new competitive communication services, the service delivery
platform (Service Factory) is being separated from the network infrastructure (Network
Factory). The former is then purely an IT platform and the latter a large Ethernet transport
infrastructure (Carrier Ethernet). It is also likely that the two activities be performed by
different companies: e.g. Internet Providers becoming Telecom Service Providers and
incumbent Telecom Operators becoming Telecom Connectivity or Network Providers
[47], [48].
e. Carrier Ethernet The telecom network provider of the future shall be a provider of
Ethernet connections (E-lines and E-LANs). Liberating the Network Providers from
added-value service provision probably lets them focus on the quality of service of their
Ethernet offer with less structural complexity. The requirement for higher quality of
connection service due to the increase of time-sensitive and non-transactional data may
lead to special transport networks using Scalable Ethernet solutions (MPLS-TP or PBBTE) delivering specific SLAs.

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f. Mobile and fixed services of premium quality/reliability may be created to serve specific
blue-light applications. This can be performed through sharing of costs and
infrastructures (frequency band, cable, workforce, etc.) among different users creating
specific operators as an alternative to dedicated infrastructures. The case study in Portugal
described in Appendix A2 is an example of this trend.
g. Satellite communications for specific applications may lead to the creation of specific
service contracts and Service Providers as illustrated in the Brazilian case study in
Appendix A3.

12.4 Telecom Technology Evolutions

Telecom technology evolution is continuously impacting the way EPU telecom networks are
implemented. Solutions considered as appropriate for large operator networks are constantly
shrinking in size and cost, making them available to dedicated network implementation. In
particular, the bandwidth and capacity borderline between operator and dedicated networks, as
well as between backbone core and edge is constantly rising.
A long lasting technological race between the IT world and the traditional telecom world is still
in progress with unpredictable next round winners. Moving away in the early 80s from the
initial separation of transmission and switching technologies, we were constantly given the
idea that the future is in integration. The domain of Switching enriched with voice and data
integration gave us the Integrated Digital Networks where computer technology gradually
swallowed the telephone switch. The IP network revolution generated the idea that the
telecommunications network is just a larger size computer network integrating a great amount
of services. The network of the future would be application servers connected to end users by a
network of large IP routers through optical modules integrated into them. This vision,
announcing the imminent death of SDH technology, seemed (or seems) particularly frightening
to the EPU community due to the requirements and constraints of some applications such as
Protection Relaying.
Other music starts to be heard at present, with the mainstream telecom actors talking of the
separation of Service Providers and Transport (Network) Providers as mentioned in the
previous section. New Optical Transport technologies (OTN) integrating the qualities of SDH
while providing much wider packet capability are being developed under the ratification of
ITU-T. IP/MPLS, the previously declared champion, is being adapted to the transport network,
taking off a lot of the complexity due to its data network functionalities (now in Service
Providers scope) and gaining a deterministic behavior and time performance. These changes
may impact greatly the future of dedicated network technologies and service separation
architecture in the EPU.
Two important domains related to this issue are Optical Networking and Ethernet Transport:
Optical Networking

Optical technology progress in recent years has rendered feasible and cost-effective in the EPU
context, a number of solutions which were previously too complex, too costly or not
sufficiently reliable. Wavelength Division Multiplexing once reserved for large mainstream
networks has made its way into dedicated EPU networks. In particular, Coarse Wavelength
Division Multiplexing (CWDM) is now a very accessible technology for federating different

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services (or groups of services) and communication modes (refer to section 9.3.2). Wavelength
multiplexing allows a new dimension in service integration, keeping legacy TDM systems and
Protection circuits on separate wavelengths from new core data networks. Double transport
planes (packet and circuit) available in many equipment, complement the wavelength
multiplex for building a compact hybrid transport for dedicated networks.
Optical networking which brought the SDH/Sonet in the late 80s and early 90s is now moving
into the Optical Transport Network (ITU-T OTN) standardized by ITU-T (G.709 revised Dec
2009). Operators are deploying OTN equipment at backbone, metro and access levels to
enhance packet networks. Inclusion of WDM and enhanced OAM gives the OTN significant
advantages over SDH and a combination of OTN and Ethernet (carrying IP) is proving to be a
very attractive industry solution for converged networks [49].
ITU-T OTN provides considerable flexibility through implementing an Optical Control Plane
that automates the allocation of wavelengths to communications. Reconfigurable Optical Add
Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) allocates routes across a number of different wavelengths
automatically at the time of route configuration. This constitutes the basis of Optical Transport
Networks delivering packets as well as TDM circuits (Constant Bit Rate traffic CBR) in a
scalable manner combining cost-effective and flexible bandwidth usage with low deterministic
delay and restoration times available through SDH [50].
On the other hand, EPUs need to consider the presently available experience data on the
lifecycle issues of different fibre cable technologies which were previously only theoretical or
based on little experience. If optical cable lifecycle may prove to be less optimistic than that
predicted, then substantial extra investment may need to be made available in the years to
come. Moreover, the traffic expectation continuously rising, the replacement cycle of the
cables is shortened, requiring supplementary disturbance and down-time for the associated
power transmission lines.
Carrier Ethernet Technologies

For a number of years, mainstream telecom industry has introduced IP/MPLS as the scalable
solution for the backbone core of all IP or Ethernet-based networks. Many Utilities, in
particular those carrying a great amount of administrative (corporate) traffic or commercial UTelco services across their network have deployed an MPLS core composed of a few nodes
interconnected through high bandwidth Ethernet links. However, it is argued at present that
MPLS presents too much complexity for a pure carrier function and does not provide necessary
guarantees for time-sensitive traffic. What is required in EPU networks is to deliver Carrier
Ethernet services (E-line, E-LAN) in a scalable manner without too much complexity while
keeping SDH-like QoS. This will allow simple migration from the present stage Ethernet
VLANs over SDH into a more scalable solution if and when necessary.
Provider Backbone Bridge (PBB-TE) defined in IEEE 802.1Qay and Transmission Profile
MPLS (MPLS-TP) being defined by ITU-T and IETF follow this same objective of providing a
simplified and time-constrained solution for scalable carrier Ethernet provision. This is a
technological step which will certainly interest EPU telecom networks in future [51].

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Network Management and Situation Awareness

Another important technology change which will impact EPU networks is the one related to
the management of network infrastructures. Management platforms are growing from Element
and Network Management to Service and Business Management.
Moreover, from a previous situation of monolithic management platforms at high cost and
maintenance effort which were often out of reach for EPU networks, we are getting to
interconnected multi-vendor modular management platforms, allowing the association of event
management, incident management, performance monitoring, network inventory, etc. from
different vendors.
TM Forum is leading to common information models and standard application interfaces
allowing gradual deployment of management infrastructures using Service Oriented
Architectures (SOA). This will allow the EPU to tailor and to build up its management system
according to its needs over many years.

12.5 Information System Evolution - Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a method for providing IT resources (hardware, software and data) as
services through Internet in a scalable and elastic manner. In a certain manner, cloud
computing is not a new concept, in fact it comes from the evolution and large scale adoption of
services that are already in place like equipment housing, centralized storage sharing and server
virtualization. The present requirement to focus on business processes, to reduce investments
and management costs, as well as faster and less expensive broadband Internet access drive
organizations into looking for these cloud computing services.
The scope of Cloud Computing is generally divided in three main types of services

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS);

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS);
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The EPU environment, with its specific security and reliability requirements governed by
specific regulations, is unlikely to adopt public cloud services in an extensive manner, at least
in the coming five to ten years.
However, driven by standardization and integration of IT and industrial processes, not
forgetting the green IT demand, the adoption of private clouds in EPUs, is already in place
and will grow gradually. This will concern both IaaS (e.g. servers and storage) and PaaS (e.g.
databases and web-service platforms).
Assuming that cloud computing in EPUs will be based on a private cloud principle, the impact
in telecom services will be more on the way they are built, managed and used (i.e. migration to
the cloud) than the way the services are accessed. In this way, the direct impact that can be
identified at this stage would be extra bandwidth and QoS requirements resulting from the
transfer of servers and storage from distributed technical rooms to the main datacenters where
the cloud will be housed.
An important potential application and an issue to be considered is disaster recovery. At
present, typical disaster recovery implementations require often a lot of manual procedures,

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activation time, frequent tests and revisions for business continuity plans, and low efficiency of
assets usage due to cold or hot standby solutions. The adoption of cloud architectures can
change the way we look at disaster recovery solutions, enabling the adoption of semi
distributed IT/Telco architectures where the cloud and the processing capabilities are spread
along the main and the backup datacenters and used in an active/active basis. This can be
achieved through long distance storage interconnection, metro-clusters, real time long distance
database synchronization, balanced Internet access, server farms, etc. This possible evolution
may render disaster recovery simpler, more reliable, more efficient and (theoretically) cheaper,
but will also need communications in line with those requirements which will necessitate
investment in (or usage of) more resources (e.g. fibers, wavelengths, MPLS, etc.).
At the time of preparation of this document, to our knowledge, EPUs are not using cloud
computing but investigating and in some cases only starting to plan to implement for corporate
organizational information systems.
On the migration into a Public Cloud, there are still many concerns and questions to be
answered relating mainly to reliability and security. Many of the questions resemble those
already discussed for procured telecom services:

Service availability and capacity How can it be guaranteed that the Service
Providers will meet not only the present needs but also the future ones as they
appear? How can the EPU internal capacity management processes be matched with
those of the providers? And what about customization, will the providers be as
flexible to the EPU as the EPU has to be for its internal customers?
Failure remediation and disaster recovery Are providers ready to offer failure
remediation schemes and guarantees in line with those already existing in house?
Is the EPU current typical SLA model applicable and enough? Are the providers
able to offer disaster recovery with the same SLA commitments as those existing at
present for internal customers? At what price?
Transparency Once we ask for a certain service in the cloud to a certain provider
we are getting that service from the cloud. What is the cloud? Who is behind the
cloud? Are there subcontractors? Who really will operate our services? How do we
meet our requirements along the chain?
Ownership and security: EPU infra-structures/applications/data will go out of its
physical and logical perimeter. Who really owns the information, EPU or its
Service Provider(s)? Can we guarantee information privacy and confidentiality?
Will other providers/partners/customers with whom an EPU has confidential
agreements accept such a model? How do we guarantee the same security
requirements and commitments that we have in place today? How can we define an
effective security policy if we lose/reduce the capability of applying security
policies enforcement and auditing? Will we be able to audit our cloud providers?
Isnt that a huge and perhaps ineffective task? In case of security breach how do we
track it and who is responsible? How will we put in place risk management
processes in this new reality?
Maturity: Nowadays even corporate services like email, portals or file transfer
can play a significant role in the critical processes of EPUs. Are providers mature
enough to support critical services or will the support be on some kind of best
effort basis?

142

Regulatory issues: How will the cloud model meet the regulatory requirements of
EPUs? What are the legal issues if we are under a public concession contract?
ROI: The model is quite complex and does not give readily a real idea of costs and
benefits. Little information is at present available on the return on investment. EPU
stilll have to demonstrate the interest of the financial model for their organizations.
Regarding the communication services and network, the first issue will be Internet
access that must be similar to the actual datacenter bandwidth access (Gigabit?) and
implicitly communications quality of service and security requirements. Are ISPs
able to provide service levels as we have in house today? The access to the cloud
should be given everywhere (fixed or mobile access)? Are ISPs prepared to commit
the necessary SLAs?

Further information on cloud computing as well as available platforms, providers and different
services may be found in [52] and [53].

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APPENDICES
A1.

IP Voice in Utility Telecoms

Hungary

The Hungarian TSO, MAVIR has a digital Operational Telephone Network since 1992,
connecting the telephone exchanges of NDC, reserve NDC and high-voltage substations (the
present number 2+26). Although this network is independent of the other used telephone
networks- as the nationwide administrative telephone network of the EPU-s and the public
telephone network-, these exchanges provide the concentrator task (collecting the different type
of lines to the dispatching desk) also.
At first the connections among the exchanges operated through PLC and microwave
connections, later on optical network. Since 1997 the network used a double tree structure (6
substation exchanges on higher level than the other), the connections were 2 Mbps trunk lines
and/or 4 wire E&M).
Since 2007 this telephone network operates as one of the districts of the nationwide
administrative telephone network of the EPUs.
In 2009 began the IP migration of this operational telephone network. In case of NDC, back-up
NDC, and 4 selected substations LAN connections were developed instead of the earlier
mentioned double tree structure.
These LAN connections are operating with double routes (through NgSDH and SDH network
on 2 Mbps and 10 Mbps lines.
The hardware changes are: routers, Main Control Server/Enhanced Survivor Server at
NDC/reserve NDC (between these MPLS connection), at the 4 substations gate-ways Local
Survivor Processors and port cards to analogue trunks and subscribers.
The IP telephones at the substations operate from the Main Server or, in case of necessity,
could work from the Local Server also. This started change will continue at the other
substations.
Reasons for IP migration and expected results:

Only IP telephone exchanges are produced.

In case both of the connections are cut off the objects in substations.
Could work independently and reach everywhere through the public network.
Improvement in voice-quality not probable.
Simultaneous usage of mobile service and subscriber set are available.
Hopefully easier managing (access enough only to one, central element).
Central managing of the call-number lists stored within telephone sets.

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Portugal

The Portuguese TSO, REN has a national wide TDM Operational Telephone Network that
provides voice and data services to Electrical and Gas dispatch centres (main and redundant),
electric and gas substations and corporative building. Additionally this telephone network is
interconnected with other telephone networks from electrical companies and with the public
telephone network.
In 2006 it was decided to start the process of evolving the telephone network into IP telephony
since it was implemented a national wide MPLS/IP network that could provide IP VPNs for
interconnection of substations and dispatch centres into the same WAN/LAN.
This project had the following guidelines and objectives:
Analyze the differences between different VoIP implementations from different vendors. In
this case it has tested 3 different vendors.
Compare the implementation of VoIP systems in office and substation sites in terms of
usability, redundancy and operation.
Implementation of a call centre in order to support the Telecom and IT helpdesk activities.
The following sites were selected:
2 Office building (400 users).
6 Substations with 50 user extensions medium each.
IP Call Center implemented in the central site with 20 IP users distributed across 4 sites
10 remote wind generation sites (8 extensions each, 6 analog modems and 2 IP phones).
For installation it was adopted the following requisites and project general options:
Each IP gateway is registered in central redundant system.
Each site has a survival mode that allows internal services to be provided even without the
central management VoIP system.
For mobile service inside the substations the choice was DECT technology since WiFi is
more expensive and not adapted for industrial environment use in the substations.
During the implementation several difficulties were found, in resume the following aspects can
synthesize the problems and difficulties detected during the implementation and testing of the
VoIP systems:
As several models of modem and fax equipment are used across the network, in some cases
problems were detected in communication (pass trough/relay configuration).
The IT network is composed by several elements, namely firewalls, DHCP servers, DNS
servers, routers, switches, etc., when there is interdependency between the VoIP network
and all these components, as the complexity increases.
Mobile communication inside the substation with some problems, namely for hand-over
of calls between cells (1 vendor).
Difficulty and in some cases unavailability to interconnect several services: BRI
connections, analog connections (FXS, FXO and E&M).
It was detected that certain configurations implemented in the central management system
were not reflected in the network equipment, differences between local and central
management system (e.g. gateways registered though MGCP into the VoIP management
system).

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 Difficulties managing the site survival mode.

In resume the usability of VoIP services in the substations environment requires different
configurations and features in order to improve the overall system.
The principal advantages that emerged from the project of implementation of VoIP systems in
different locations were:

Use of internal WAN/LAN network, no provisioning of dedicated point-to-point TDM

services.
Reducing the operational costs (per call basis)
More flexible usage (registration of VoIP phones, soft-phone installed in notebook, etc.).
Possible use of SIP protocol allowing the use of telephones of different vendors and
connection to public operator less expensive.
Integration of PC and Telephone (web pages for several configurations, integration with
Outlook new functionalities as click-to-call can be used, etc.).
Use of corporative directories with addresses in the telephone.

Netherland

The Dutch distribution network company, Stedin, managing gas and electricity networks
composed of around 200 communication nodes (10-150kV electricity and gas stations) and a
total of 650 substations to cover, is deploying an IP telephony network for operational and
operation-support voice communications.
The company uses public mobile phone (GSM) services which are however unavailable most
of the time in case of emergency. Pagers (better availability than GSM) as well as TETRA
mobile system of the Public Safety services (Police, Fire brigade, Ambulance Services etc.) are
also used.
In case of electricity failure and lack of public telephone services, the technical staff must
travel to the nearest station and use the companys dedicated telephone facilities.
The dedicated telephone system which is migrating to IP can operate without connection to the
public network, hence allowing communication between HV stations and Control Centres. The
network uses redundant communication servers placed in the two geographically distinct
control centres.
A number of process efficiency features are sought from the new IP telephone network,
including:
-

A new numbering plan based upon geographical zones, electricity or gas, High Voltage
or Medium Voltage, functional departments, etc.

Calling party authentication and display/control of caller attributes (identification,

formal qualifications, etc.) on the called party screen. This feature is important for
working with multiple contractors.

Additional functionality such as special conference calls, etc.

An outstanding issue to be solved at present is the connection of legacy voice modems to the IP
telephony network.

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Australia

Snowy Hydro Limited is a leading provider of peak, renewable electricity to the National
Electricity Market in Australia. It owns and operates the 3800 megawatt (MW) Snowy
Mountains Scheme, an integrated water and hydro-electric power system located in Australia's
Southern Alps comprising sixteen major dams, seven major power stations, 145km of
interconnected tunnels and 80km of aqueducts, as well as two gas-fired power stations totalling
620MW, both located in the southern Australian state of Victoria. There are also support
offices including in Sydney and in Cooma, resulting in the need to provide voice services to
locations spread over a distance of 1000km.
In 2004 and 2005 a new voice system was implemented which carried both operational and
corporate voice services and covered all sites belonging to Snowy Hydro Limited. The system
chosen comprised a combination of IP enabled hybrid telephone exchanges interconnected
with server based soft switches. This gained the benefits of IP based telephony while still
preserving the resilience required for operational and safety telephony. Each site is
interconnected by multiple routes comprising both IP (as a separate VRF on a QOS enabled
MPLS network) and TDM (where available) or multiple IP routes where TDM is unavailable.
The use of the hybrid approach enabled the condensation of two separate telephone networks
(operational and corporate) into one system while not compromising resilience, but gaining the
advantages of the IP voice services for certain applications. Office workers were provided with
IP phones giving them mobility to work at different desk locations (eliminating costly moves
and changes) or at different geographic locations using the same contact phone number. The
main and backup control centres were set up with multi-appearance IP phones. This has
enabled the use of different control centres without the need to notify other parties to use
different contact numbers. TDM phones were also provided to cater for a failure of the IP
network. Safety phones spread throughout the power stations were kept as analogue extensions
but their resilience against link failures was enhanced by the provision of IP routes between
locations that were additional to the TDM routes. The provision of IP routes also provided a
means for the carriage of voice for free on data networks to achieve substantial cost savings
through toll bypass.
The main issues (additional to change control issues) that had to be solved during the
implementation of the system were:

Establishing a consistent QOS enabled underlying data environment across both

internal networks and external service provider networks. In the case of Snowy Hydro
Limiteds system, Expedited Forwarding was used for real time packets and Assured
Forwarding for signalling. Policies were applied on entry to Service Provider networks
in order to ensure that Snowy Hydro Limited did not cause voice degradation by
exceeding the service levels procured (e.g. exceeding the service allocation of low
latency queue packets. Service Providers re-mark packets exceeding the procured
service level allocation to a lower priority thereby resulting in a lower voice quality.)
There are fundamental limitations in the size of spanning trees that need to be catered
for in the design of the LAN environment. This will impact the desktop phones if this
design requirement is not catered for.
Maintaining tight firewall security (deny all) was a challenge because of the lack of
information often available for minimum firewall rule sets as opposed to opening up a
147

large range of ports on the firewalls. E.g. too tight a policy can lead to one way voice
calls.
Echo issues often related to duplex mismatches in the data network or were associated
with the use of specialised phones such as conference phones, cordless phones and
headsets. Even room layouts can affect echo issues. Careful attention to duplexing and
echo cancellation settings was required.
Implementing voice quality monitoring systems was important so that the diagnostic
information was available to resolve internal network issues as well as to substantiate
issues with Service Providers.

Over the last five years of operation, the system has proved to be extremely resilient. The main
issues that have occurred at times have been caused on routes running through Service
Provider networks as follows:

Different performance measurement systems make it difficult to convince a Service

Provider that the provided service does not meet SLA requirements.
The use of monthly average SLA technical specifications which do not recognise the
instantaneous nature of voice. e.g. A Service Provider usually specifies monthly
averaged jitter figures for each grade of data service but small irregular instantaneous
peaks in jitter may exceed the jitter buffer settings of IP telephones causing a drop in
voice quality. This latter issue is caused by a Service Provider that has over-subscribed
its infrastructure.
Changed ownership of a Service Provider resulting in changed service provision
priorities including not supporting the original SLA requirements.

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A2.

Sharing Mobile Emergency Service (TETRA)

EDP (Portugal) employs private mobile radio systems for voice and MV SCADA applications.
These radio systems comprise:
Analog VHF networks used for voice and data
Analog mobile voice used only when public cellular (GSM) is down
Analog data networks with better availability than GPRS (99% compared to 95% for
GPRS)
However, EDP needs to find alternatives mainly due to the pressure from the regulator to
abandon the VHF band and the desire to migrate to standard TCP/IP based SCADA protocols
such as IEC 60870-5-104.
In this context EDP signed a protocol with the Portuguese Government for setting up a pilot
project using SIRESP, the governments TETRA Network for Emergency and Security Forces.
The objectives and goals of EDP for the pilot project were to test the networks capability to
support TCP/IP SCADA (IEC 60870-5-104 light version), coverage and ease of use of voice
services and network availability.
SIRESP (Sistema Integrado de Redes de Emergncia e Segurana de Portugal) is the
Portuguese Government TETRA Network for Emergency and Security Forces serving 55 000
users
It provides a very dense coverage of the national territory through:
532 BTS + 2 mobile BTS
4 switches (+ 2 in the islands + 1 for tests)
66 dispatch centers
Avaliability (%)

Operacional

> 99.9

Coverage(%)

Urban, suburban, highways and main roads

> 95

Rural

> 90

Buldings Urban and suburban

> 80

Buldings - Rural

> 50

Same cell

< 500

Switching delay

< 100

Rejected calls

< 2.5

Dropped calls

< 0.5

Call setup (ms)

Capacity (%)

SIRESP Service Level Agreement:

The pilot project carried out over a period exceeding twelve months comprised:

30 RTUs with 104 protocol loaded firmware;

Mobile terminals (installed in work vehicles)
9 handheld/portable radios
1 dispatch console
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A 2 Mbit/s Ethernet line was installed between EDP SCADA SYSTEM and SIRESP to
guarantee connectivity between the two networks (for voice and data)
The SIRESP network provides a fixed IP address to each unit and the scada system command
center.

Pilot Project Results

Voice Service:
Good coverage (even in places where no GSM operator exists);
Fast call setup (virtually instantaneous);
Good audio quality;
Users prefer handheld to vehicular mobile terminals (they prefer to carry communication
terminal with them where they go, e.g. up the poles, lines, etc) ;
Good network availability During a tropical windstorm (up to 220 km/h) in the west
region of Portugal all GSM operators went down (in the region). The SIRESP network
provided EDP the only means of communication in the region (in addition to EDP VHF
network);
SCADA (data) Service:
Reduced availability of incumbent 2 Mbit/s circuit between SIRESP switch and EDP
SCADA system. We were not authorized to use our fibre optic network;
High latency packet transmission time (from 700 ms to 1400 ms). We had to adjust
protocols timers to cope the high latency. Also, SIRESP network changed from 1 fixed
timeslot to 4 dynamic timeslots assigned to data, per site;
Long drops without recovery - Radio attempts to re-establish the connection are
unsuccessful (SN_ACTIVATE_PDP_CONTEXT_DEMAND ) -> local reset is needed.
This is the main reason for the ongoing pilot (only ends when this problem is solved);
Local Site Mode -> Useful for voice but not for data. Radios are locked to a single BTS
(there is no alternative if it losses connection with switch).
Constraints
SIRESP does not support terminal maintenance;
SIRESP helpdesk is not familiar with data issues;
CAPEX: Tetra terminals are expensive (vs GSM);
OPEX: Monthly fee is 10 times higher than GSM (is the premium service worth it?)

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A3.

Satellite Communications in Power Utilities

Satellite communications constitute a valuable option for specialist utility applications where
other services, either through deployed facilities or procured from telecom operators, may not
be accessible, economically feasible or sufficiently disaster-proof. Some typical situations are:

Black start-up of power installations When power supply fails, then telecom facilities
are lost after a time duration which depends upon the battery and standby generator
autonomy of the telecom infrastructure. Moreover, in disaster situations, telecom facilities
can suffer destruction in the same way as the power system facilities.

Access to remote facilities Power generation installations (hydro plants, off-shore wind
farms, etc.) may not be accessible through other deployed solutions in a cost-effective
manner or through procured communications.

Alternate communications Satellite communications may serve as back-up to key

telecom services where no other back-up path can be established.

Fast deployment facilities Satellite communication terminals can be integrated into fast
deployment mobile units and transported when necessary to temporary work sites as
illustrated in the Brazilian example presented in this section [m].

The usage of satellite communications for SCADA and monitoring applications has so far been
limited primarily because VSAT services, while being autonomous and reliable, are expensive
in comparison to other technology options, and scaling a solution to support the SCADA
platform for large utilities is cost prohibitive.
Consumer-based Broadband Service

Recent developments have employed existing consumer-based broadband products tailored to

service utility company requirements to provide new services designed specifically for the
electricity and water utility market in particular SCADA. The widespread roll-out of such
services is still in its infancy, but may provide the
benefits of a satellite solution at costs which are Price
comparable to established solutions such as terrestrial
radio and GPRS.
From a cost perspective, it is estimated that these
services will be positioned between GPRS and
standard VSAT (as shown in the adjacent diagram).
For the end user, this means a VSAT service with a
service availability of greater than 99%, for
marginally more cost than GPRS which provides an
availability of 75-95%.

VSAT
Consumer
based satellite
systems

GPRS

Traffic
These new satellite IP services may support a wide range of monitoring and command
applications where latency issues are not critical. They allow the benefits of satellite autonomy
and ease of installation to be extended to a wider range of applications, and enable a much
wider monitoring base, something which will be particularly beneficial in supporting the
requirements of future smart grid applications. In addition, the satellite platform also offers the
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potential to support services and applications which require higher data rates such as video
applications and CCTV monitoring; services which on a widespread basis may not have been
cost effective in the past.
Consumer broadband services offered by satellite Service Providers are generally asymmetric,
with the downlink being five or six times larger than the uplink although other up/down link
combinations should be feasible according to application requirements.
An example of the standard hardware for this type of system includes a satellite modem, the
iLNB and an 80cm satellite antenna. The equipment is generally compact, easy to interface
and, because the consumer equipment is designed for self install, not costly to deploy. EMC
hardening may however be necessary for installation in severe EPU environment.
Services of this type require a high speed link between the hub station at the satellite operators
location and the IP backbone. This link may be provisioned through an ISP. Alternatively, a
second satellite link back to the EPU control platform can be provided, again using the low
cost service. Such configurations depend on user-specific requirements for latency, network
independence and cost.
Fast Deployment Mobile Units Brazil

Tower collapse incidents are particularly harsh situations requiring complex logistics and
intensive voice and data communications for moving workforce, materials and machines to
site, deploying a support base, and performing works to restore the line. The unavailability of
transmission services is heavily penalized by the power system operating organization and so
the company is strongly motivated to reduce the average line restoration time through
improved communications. In many cases, public cellular phone service is not available or
proves to be very costly as the usage is predominantly long-distance
Furnas Centrais Eletricas, a major Brazilian EPU, has developed container-based Telecom
Mobile Units (TMU) for facing transmission line tower collapse scenarios [54]. The TMU
provides local wireless voice and data and uses a satellite service to connect these remote
facilities to the companys core infrastructure. The container-based unit is of compact design
allowing easy transport and positioning, even when installed on irregular ground without very
rigorous levelling.
Furnas has negotiated an annual satellite service contract covering 30 days of usage per year
for a fixed lump sum. Each time that service is required, the Service Provider must make the
link available within few hours of the service request. This delay is compatible with the time
required to expedite the TMU to the incident site. Usage exceeding 30 days per year is billed at
a contractual daily cost.
The cost of the satellite service (including satellite equipment rental) in the present contract for
a 256kbps link is reported to be approximately 15.000 per year, with a cost of 350 per extra
day of use and the quality of service reported to be satisfactory.

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Fast Deployment Telecom Mobile Unit used in Brazil [54]

153

A4.

Disaster Counter-measures Learning from US 2005

Hurricanes

United Telecommunications Council (UTC), the international trade association representing

the telecommunications interests of utilities companies from US, decided to undertake a formal
survey of electric, gas and water utilities of all sizes to generate data about how the
telecommunication networks served the utilities of the US Gulf Coast during disasters caused
by hurricane season in 2005. The target of this action was to determine the decision makers of
the society to realize the importance of very reliable utilities telecommunication networks,
especially during and after natural disasters on the one side, and to provide arguments to other
utilities for taking adequate counter-measures to prevent future similar or other catastrophic
events, on the other side. What follows is an extract from the UTC Report [55] available in full
from the UTC website (www.utc.org).
1. Background

During the months of August, September and October of 2005, the Gulf Coast of the United
States and both coasts of Florida were belted by a series of three devastating hurricanes:
Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Katrina put much of New Orleans under water; trees were flattened
as well as homes, public buildings and communications towers by Category 4 winds. Loss of
life from this storm was tragic, and unusually high. Rescue and restoration effort were severely
hampered by the loss of public fix switched network (PSTN) and wireless carrier
communications.
Still recovering, Gulf States were again pelted by Hurricane Rita just weeks later and then by
Wilma in October. While these storms were not quite as severe as Katrina, the rapid succession
tested the limits of overstressed public safety and utility repair personnel. It became clear as
response efforts continued that the recovery of nearly all other infrastructures was dependent
on electric power restoration. Moreover, all people have a vital need for safe drinking water
and public health demands reliable wastewater facilities. Within these industries, as always,
coordination of repair crews, rapid restoration and interaction with public safety personnel
depends upon working communications channels.
Communities of the Gulf Coast and Florida are served by a wide variety of electric, gas and
water utilities, including many small regional companies and municipal power/water
authorities whose service territories lie within those of larger entities. These include large,
investor-owned electric power companies, electric generating companies and natural gas
utilities.
2. Survey Questions and Results

The Utilities Telecom Council posed five basic questions to utilities in hard-hit areas to
determine how their various communications systems behaved during and after the hurricanes,
and analyzed the resulting data. Learnings and adequate counter-measures which could be
proposed to EPUs world are presented below.

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2.1 Communications Systems Performance

Most utilities, regardless of service territory size or proximity to the centers of the storms,
reported that their communications systems behaved well during the hurricanes. This is in stark
contrast to the public switched network (PSTN) in the region and wireless carriers, who
suffered extensive loss of service and slow recovery time. The comparison points to the fact
that communications systems, if built extremely well, can withstand the intense wind and/or
flooding associated with these events; however, unlike public networks, EPU systems
redundancies and robustness can be limited in size and scope, since they are designed and
constructed to meet the specialized needs of a single entity or group of companies. Such
construction would be cost-prohibitive for a commercial system designed to serve millions of
the general public. Thus, in spite of the growth of various commercial communications
networks, there will be a continued need for EPUs to maintain their own private
communications networks for mission-critical functions, including backbone networks.
Most companies that suffered damage to their equipment and networks fixed it very quickly,
generally within 24-48 hours following the passing of the hurricane. Such repairs were carried
out according to detailed emergency plans, since communications networks are vital to power
restoration and infrastructure recovery efforts being undertaken area-wide.
Utilities reported that cell and fix networks were down, leased lines and satellite
communications suffered damages. One small water district authority depending entirely on
cellular communications, suffered serious communications difficulties.
The utilities that had the greatest communications difficulties were the smaller cooperatives
and municipal authorities.
Lack of interoperability among utilities and between utilities and public safety remains a
serious problem that hampers restoration efforts.
Hurricane rescue and restoration efforts provide an example of the benefit that could be reaped
from allocating a small amount of dedicated spectrum for EPUs, with systems to be built using
an open architecture and made available to all emergency participants as needed for disaster
recovery.
2.2 Private Mobile Radio, Backbone Survivor

The performances of private mobile radio (PMR) systems were very high during and after the
storms. Unlike most commercial wireless systems, these networks are built specifically to
weather such disasters and to continue to operate in extended power outages, in support of
restoration crews carrying out extremely hazardous duties. However, the superior performance
of these individual systems offset by the lack of interoperability between systems and the lack
of dedicated spectrum to share with other utilities and public safety.
PMR is at this time the most critical tool of critical infrastructure communications in
emergency situations. It provides for necessary mobility and quality of service as crews travel
throughout the damaged service territory. In many cases during events such as Katrina, it
provides the only means of wireless communications during the first critical days after storm
impact.
The overall performance of private utility communications systems during the catastrophic
storms, in comparison with consumer networks, reinforces the industry position that private
systems must be maintained, and encouraged for emergency response.
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Due to the emphasis upon reliability for utility operations, it is clear for the foreseeable future
that critical infrastructure entities not depend upon commercial systems for core
communications.
2.3 Utility fiber networks benefited from pre-planning

The performance of private and commercial fiber networks during the hurricanes demonstrates
that utilities build more reliability and redundancy into fiber networks than their commercial
communications networks counterparts. The technology itself offers all system operators
multiple opportunities to secure communications through the ability to deploy features such as
intelligent, self-healing rings. The different performance levels of private and some
commercial fiber networks throughout the Gulf Coast and Florida point to the fact that the
entities have entirely different objectives in mind: utilities build for reliability because
communications is critical to the functioning of the core business (electric, natural gas or water
delivery), while commercial communications companies build to provide consumer services
for the general population.
An important conclusion is that EPUs private fiber networks survived the storms due to preplanning for worst case scenarios. They behaved very well to the storms and where there were
problems, they were overcome by inherent features of the technology. These features were preplanned and built into the networks. By contrast, commercial companies suffered more
difficulties with broken cables than private, internal networks and had more difficulty restoring
service. As well, smaller utilities relying upon commercial fiber-based networks spent weeks
for service to be restored.
2.4 Microwave systems survived to the storms

Like fiber networks, microwave systems survived very well to the storms, even the intense
winds accompanied these events. Although some damage to microwave towers and
attachments was reported, this damage was not as extensive as it was to other types of
communications towers such as generally taller broadcast towers. Additionally, utilities
reported that they employed detailed backup plans, including employing mobile towers and
safeguarding communications through redundant links. Any needed repairs, such as refocusing
dishes to restore links, were accomplished in the days immediately following the storms.
Katrina event reinforced the conclusion among public safety, federal, state and local officials,
that EPUs entities, along with other emergency responders, have to be included in disaster
planning.
2.5 Utilities and public safety need better coordination

The actions deployed for disaster recovery demonstrated that while utility communications
systems behaved well during the hurricanes, there was little or no coordination with state or
local public safety organizations aside from some informal sharing of resources. Usually, the
utilities played the role of assisting public safety, and not the other way around.
Beside the clear needs of dedicated spectrum for EPUs and clear advancements in
communications interoperability, EPUs entities responding to disasters should be included in
any State or federally developed coordination process.
EPUs have to be deeply involved with public safety and homeland security organizations,
especially in the areas of critical infrastructure protection and cyber-security and

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interoperability effort, because of large enterprise ITC networks and critical control systems
such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA).
Equipment that is not dependent on frequency assignments is extremely important to both
EPUs and public safety, while again, unlike traditional public safety, EPUSs have no dedicated
spectrum on which to operate a next- generation communications system. This definitely is a
long-term effort and one that will require massive investment by all parties concerned in new
infrastructure and new user equipment.

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A5.

Survey of Electric Power Dimensioning Practice in EPU

Data Centres

Introduction

A survey was performed with 9 responding Electrical Utilities from different countries across
the world and covering different sectors of activity (Transmission, Generation and
Distribution) in order to collect EPUs current practices regarding the dimensioning of electric
power infra-structures in datacenters.
In this document Data Center should be understood as all kinds of rooms used to house servers,
storage, critical workstations or telecom assets, and system signifies all kinds of IT or telecom
equipments housed in datacenters.
Survey Results

Although it is hard to generalize, based on the answers provided by the questioned companies,
it was possible to identify the following current practices and evolution opportunities:

All systems housed inside the datacenter are considered critical and therefore supplied
through uninterrupted electric power sources;

Beyond critical systems, some other equipment like essential lights, access control
devices and management/monitoring systems are also fed by the datacenter UPS. In
some other cases this equipments have their own internal battery incorporated;

UPSs are centralized but and constituted by different power modules in N+1
redundancy scheme to avoid partial hardware failure and to permit partial maintenance.
Centralized redundant UPS provide better management and maintenance capabilities
than distributed and is a most cost effective approach;

The typical battery autonomy is:

o Control centers: From 2 to 10 hours;

o Telecom rooms: From 4 to 24 hours;
o IT Datacenters: From 1 to 4 hours.

It is not current practice the usage of predefined selective shutdown mechanisms. In

some cases this is done manually shutting down redundant or non essential systems
what can provide up to 20% more of battery autonomy time;

Every datacenter has standby emergency power generators, mainly diesel engines but in
some cases gas is also used. In case of power failure some other essential services on
the facility should be fed by the generator like air conditioned and lights. The generator
starts automatically in less than one minute and runs without refill (considering full
tank capacity) for:
o Control centers: From 1 to 7 days;
o Telecom rooms: From 3 to 7 days;
o IT Datacenters: From 1 to 4 days.

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The generator fuel tank is typically refilled on demand by preselected providers but
without SLAs defined;

The general redundancy model wide adopted is N+1 but in a few cases 2N model is
also used;

To prevent failure due to accidents or human errors, and to reduce interferences

between power and data cables, some aspects also are considered:
o Separated rooms for power systems;
o Double power cable routes combined with double distribution switchboards;
o Separated cable routes for power and data.

Redundancy schemes typically consider:

o Double power transformers;
o Double UPS / rectifiers;
o Multiple battery strings;
o Double distribution switchboards;
o Double power distribution units and socket strips in the rack fed by different
circuits coming from different switchboards;
o Double power supplies in equipment;
o Automatic transfer switches combined with redundant power circuits for non
redundant power supply equipments;

Different datacenters may coexist in the same room. This leads to different power
supply systems rather than an integrated approach. This is partly due to different asset
owners operating without an integrated approach.

The typical EPUs datacenter electrical distribution concept is illustrated in the following
diagram:

Figure A5.1 EPUs datacenter electric distribution concept

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Based on the datacenter availability tier classification defined by the Uptime Institute, the
typical electrical distribution topology implemented on EPUs datacenters can be located
between Tier II and Tier III levels, combining significant redundant components and partial
concurrently maintenance capabilities.

Evolution opportunities:

The EPUs essential role in the present day society renders the availability of power supply to
its IT and telecom infrastructure part of the critical components to guarantee the demanded
service level. To achieve such level, enabling maintenance activity without disrupting the
power supply and minimizing the impact of hardware failure or human error, a set of evolution
opportunities must be considered:
Adopt a 2N redundancy scheme, at least in the more important facilities like control
centres;
To avoid high temperature and humidity lack of control in case of main power failure, it is
recommended to use UPS to feed a part of the air conditioned equipment;
Deploy all electric systems, including distribution switchboards outside the perimeter of
the IT/Telco technical room;
Battery autonomy shall de dimensioned taking into account the probability of failure of the
medium voltage distribution network. Having really redundant medium voltage power
lines in the facility if a effective way to increase availability;
Introduce automatic selective shutdown mechanisms to bring significant improvement of
power autonomy for the most critical systems;
Establish contracts with fuel suppliers with SLA;
Adopting this evolution opportunities in some cases may not be cost effective, so EPUs must
adapt them according to each datacenters importance and service requirements.

Companies participating to the survey:

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o

CEZ (Romania),
EDP (Portugal),
EPS (Serbia),
FURNAS Centrais Eletricas (Brazil),
IEC (Israel),
KEPCO (Japan),
REN (Portugal),
Snowy Hydro (Australia),
Statnett (Norway),
Western Power (Australia)

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A6.

Deploying a Management Framework Western Power

1. Introduction

A case study is presented of telecommunications management within Western Power and

considers management organization, processes and tools both before and after the installation
of Western Power's new telecommunications network management system. Western Power is
compared against the models and concepts presented in the brochure from both maturity and
compliance viewpoints.
This case study does not consider the implementation of the new NMS, this is discussed in
more depth in [45]
2. Background

Western Power is responsible for the transmission and distribution of electricity in the south
west of Western Australia, otherwise known as the South West Interconnected System (SWIS).
Western Power operates as an independent business that transmits power from power stations
to residential, business and industrial customers. It also ensures equitable access to its
electricity network for any new generators or retailers seeking to compete in the electricity
market. As Western Australia's leading electricity transporter, Western Power employs over
2,500 staff and 700 contractors, supplies power to more than 930,000 customers and has over
$3.5 billion in assets. Western Power owns a network that covers over 322,000 sq km with
over 140 transmission substations; 58,000 transformers; 88,000km of power lines and 721,000
power poles. The SWIS can be seen in as the highlighted area below.

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3. Western Powers Communications networks

Western Power owns and operates an operational communications network with over
AU$300M in assets, over 250 dedicated communications sites, over 100 shared
communication sites (within substations) and in excess of 2000 network elements. An
overview map of WPs communications network can be seen in the above figure showing fibre
(shown as orange) and microwave (shown as green). The operational telecommunications
network primarily exists to support the electricity transmission and distribution business and to
meet other technical regulatory requirements placed upon Western Power (for example
telecommunications circuits for electricity generators and retailers). In addition to these core
requirements, the operational communications network provides a number of services for other
corporate users, such as corporate LAN / WAN systems, and non-operational asset monitoring
systems.
The operational services carried upon Western Powers telecommunications network require
high availability, in order to meet their regulatory requirements, and the majority of the
network is designed and built with this high availability in mind. As a result, the operational
telecommunications network is mostly duplicated to meet these availability requirements.
Western Powers operational communications systems provide as services: teleprotection
signalling; SCADA communications; telephony; voice mobile radio (VHF); Ethernet VLAN
services; and distribution automation communications (UHF radio). WP utilises a number of
communications bearers optical fibre, microwave, pilot cable, power line carrier and third
party carriers. The predominant technologies on these bearers are PDH, SDH and Ethernet.
Development of the communications network is primarily driven by transmission network
augmentation; however the communications network is heavily influenced by rapid changes in
communications technology and the relatively short asset life of communications equipment.
4. Before the installation of a new tool-set
4.1 Telecommunications Service Delivery model and upstream management

Until 2006, Western Power was a government owned vertically integrated utility comprising
generation, transmission, distribution and retail. The company was disaggregated in 2006, and
the new Western Power became a regulated monopoly transmission and distribution utility,
continuing as state government owned. This case study only considers Western Power as it has
been structured since 2006.
Western Power can be most closely modelled as a telecommunications Service Provider of
type A as defined in figure 8.4. The description of this type of Service Provider (as discussed in
section 8.4.1) is an accurate fit to Western Power.
The telecommunications services are owned, strategically managed, operationally managed,
and delivered in line with an overall corporate model that is summarised in the diagram
hereafter.
Corporate management of the telecommunications asset and systems is undertaken using
identical business processes to those utilised for e.g. substation or new transmission line build.

162

4.2 Business Process Models and Maturity

Western Power implemented, over the course of thirty years, an organically grown set of
processes that evolved to directly meet the requirements of the (internal, operational) customer.
There was never any conscious or planned attempt to align or streamline processes to meet any
standard (such as the ITU models).
These organically grown processes and management have generally followed, or been forced
to follow, the models implemented for the operation of the electrical network, and have utilised
similar tool-sets and systems. In the defence of Western Power, the processes are mature and
well-documented; however these processes are extremely specialised and completely
inflexible.
However, these organically grown processes led to organically grown tools to manage the
telecommunications network. These management systems were deployed in an ad-hoc and
reactive manner, driven by the needs of a new technology or to address capacity requirements.
Western Power could be described as (generally) being at maturity level 3 defined as per
the COBIT models.
4.3 Management Tools and Information Systems

To monitor, control and document the telecommunications network, Western Power has
operated electronic / database systems since the early 1980s and paper / offline electronic
systems before then. Western Power operated a number of standalone, un-connected

163

management platforms for operational performance management, fault management and

configuration management.
5. The change journey (from a management perspective)

Due to extensive electrical system growth from 2004 to present (itself due to considerable
economic growth in Western Australia), WPs telecommunications network has also grown
considerably. During 2007, a forecast of telecommunications network growth identified that
WP would not be able to maintain a resilient network (to meet operational regulatory
requirements) from 2009 onwards.
Western Power embarked on a program to replace the existing tool-set of network management
systems. The tripartite management scope as outlined in figure 10.1 was not fully considered as
part of the initial scope the focus was strongly on changing the tools in reaction to the
business driver.
6. Following the implementation of a new tool-set
6.1 Telecommunications Service Delivery model and upstream management

The upstream management requirements and the way in which Western Power delivers
telecommunications services has experienced any underlying change (no perceived issues
driver - although it could be argued there may have been a missed opportunity driver).
During the implementation, and from a comparison to the models presented in this brochure, it
is apparent that Western Power delivers a standard suite of telecommunications services, when
compared against other electrical utilities.
The purpose of the initial implementation of the tool-set was to accommodate growth and to
asset replace an ageing management platform. Its cost was justified through OPEX offset
(people, maintenance of existing tools, and operational improvement through efficiencies in the
toolset).
6.2 Business processes

The work undertaken to replace our current toolset with an integrated NMS has not
dramatically changed or matured our business processes, except where there was a clash
between the toolset and our ways of working. However, by the very nature of implementing an
operational support system with modules and capabilities that can enable implementation of
TMForum Frameworx, Western Power has been forced into some models (for example naming
conventions). This has opened our eyes to the full possibilities of Frameworx, and the
associated cost benefits.
7. Future planning

Western Power, in line with every other EPU, is facing the upcoming challenge and
opportunity presented by the Smart Grid. Western Powers smart grid roadmap has clearly
identified the need for considerable communications infrastructure to enable two-way
communications between devices such as meters, electric vehicles, etc. and Western Powers
systems. The need for management tools to manage the explosive increase in communications
devices is evident, and the response required in terms of business processes and structure will
be considerable.
It is believed that the management tools, and the ongoing alignment of business processes to
the eTOM framework, will stand Western Power in good stead for the future.

164

A7.

ITIL Management Framework

The IT infrastructure library (ITIL) is a major initiative in the field of IT management

developed in the late 80s by the UK Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency
(CCTA) incorporated at present in the Office of Government Commerce (OGC).
It gives a detailed description of best practices, provides checklists, tasks and procedures that
may be used by IT organizations according to their needs. Through its scalable and flexible
adopt and adapt approach, ITIL is applicable to all IT organizations irrespective of their size
or the technology in use.
ITIL is not a standard, but rather a set of guidelines for a structured, common-sense, processdriven approach to ensure close alignment between IT and business processes. It recognizes
that there is no universal solution to the process design and implementation for the
management and delivery of IT services. As such, organizations, management systems and
tools cannot be ITIL compliant, but may implement management processes assessed through
ITIL guidance.
The present edition of ITIL is V3 (May 2007) consisting of 26 processes and functions grouped
under 5 volumes, arranged around the concept of Service Lifecycle structure:

Service Strategy,
Service Design,
Service Transition,
Service Operation
Continual Service Improvement

However, ITIL V2 (2001), in particular its first two components (service support and delivery)
are the most commonly used. The V2 grouped process guidelines according to different aspects
of IT management, applications and services into 8 logical sets:

Service Support
Service Delivery
ICT Infrastructure Management
Security Management
Business Perspective
Application Management
Software Asset Management

The logical sets have been complemented by two implementation guidelines:

Planning to Implement Service Management

ITIL Small-scale Implementation (for smaller IT units)

The structures of V2 and V3 are given in figures A7.1 and A7.2 hereafter.
The international standard ISO/IEC20000 (based on the British Standard BS15000) describes
an integrated set of management processes aligned with ITIL (but with reduced scope).

165

Figure A7.1 - ITIL V2 Processes (Warning - explanations are only indicative)

Service Desk / Service
Request Management (SD)

Incident Management (IM)

Service Support

Problem Management (PM)

Change Management (ChM)

166

Provide a single point of contact for

Service Users and handle incidents,
problems and questions
Perform life-cycle management for
Service Requests
Keeping the customer informed of
progress and advise on workarounds
Handle large volumes of telephone call
transactions (Call Centre)
Manage, co-ordinate and resolve
incidents as quickly as possible at
primary support level (Help Desk):
Provide an interface for other activities
(e.g. change requests, maintenance
contracts, software licenses, SLM, CM,
AM, FM and ITSC)
Restore normal service operation
(within SLA) as quickly as possible
with the least possible impact on either
the business or the user, at a costeffective price.
An 'Incident' is any event which is not
part of the standard operation of the
service and which causes, or may
cause, an interruption or a reduction of
the quality of the service.
Resolve the root causes of incidents
Minimize the adverse impact of
incidents and problems caused by
errors within the IT infrastructure,
Prevent recurrence of incidents related
to these errors.
A `problem' is an unknown underlying
cause of one or more incidents, and a
`known error' is a problem that is
successfully diagnosed and for which
either a work-around or a permanent
resolution has been identified
Ensure that standardized methods and
procedures are employed for handling
all changes (add, modify or remove).
Ensure minimal disruption of services
A Change Request (CR) is sent to the
ChM and reflected into a Forward
Schedule of Changes (FSC)

Service Support
(Contd)

Release Management (RM)

Configuration Management
(CM)

Ensure the availability of licensed,

tested, and version-certified software
and hardware, functioning as intended
when introduced into existing
infrastructure
Track all of IT assets through the CM

database (CMDB) containing

assets, their configurations, and
their interactions
Configuration Planning and regular
planning reviews
Identification and labeling of assets.
Recording of asset information,
(hard/software versions, ownership,
documentation and other identifiers
with a business defined level of detail
Control Liaise with ChM to ensure
that no Configuration Item is added,
modified, replaced or removed without
approved Request for Change, etc.
Lifecycle monitoring (ordered,
received, under test, live, under repair,
withdrawn, etc.)
Verification reviews and audits
(physical existence, correct records in
the CMDB and parts list). Check
Release documentation before changes
are made to the live environment.

167

Service Level Management

(SLM)

Capacity Management (CaM)

Service Delivery

IT Service Continuity
Management (ITSC)

Availability Management
(AM)

Financial Management (FM)

168

Primary interface with the customer

(as opposed to the user serviced by
the Service Desk)
Produce and maintain a Service
Catalogue (standard IT SLAs)
Monitor the IT service levels specified
in the SLAs, ensure that the agreed
services are delivered
Establish Metrics and Monitor against
benchmark
Liaise with AM, CaM, IM and PM to
ensure required service level & quality
Ensure Operational Level Agreements
(OLAs) with Support Providers
Match IT resources to business demands
Application Sizing
Workload Management
Demand Management
Modeling
Capacity Planning
Resource Management
Performance Management
Perform Risk Assessment & Reduce
disaster risks
Ensure service recovery & Evaluate
recovery options
Business continuity planning
Prioritize service recovery through
Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Produce Contingency Plan
Regularly test and review the plan
Survey availability requirements
Produce availability plan
Monitor availability obligations
Manage resilience
Calculate & optimize service cost
Recover costs from users

ICT Design and Planning

ICT Infrastructure
Management

Security
Management
Business Perspective
Application
Management
Software Asset Mgt.
(SAM)

Strategies, policies and Plans

Overall & Mgt Architecture
Requirement Specs & Tendering
Business Cases
ICT Deployment Mgt
Design, build, test & deploy projects
ICT Operations
Day-to-day technical supervision
Incidents reported by users or Events
generated by the infrastructure
Often work closely with Incident Mgt
& Service Desk
Logging of all operational events
Maintenance of operational monitoring
& management tools
ICT Technical Support
Support infrastructure and service mgt
with multiple levels of technical expertise
Deploy Security Policy in the management organization

Business Continuity Mgt.

Transforming Business Practice, Partnerships and Outsourcing
Improve the overall quality of software development & support
Gather requirements for meeting business objectives
Maintain software license compliance
Track inventory and software asset use
Maintain policies and procedures on software asset lifecycle

169

Figure A.7.2- ITIL V3 Service Life Cycle-oriented and network-centric

Service Portfolio Management

Service
Strategy

Demand Management
IT Financial Management
Service Catalogue Management
Service Level Management
Risk Management

Service Design

Capacity Management
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Mgt
Information Security Mgt
Compliance Management
IT Architecture Management
Supplier Management
Service Asset & Configuration
Management
Service Validation & Testing
Transition Planning & Support

Service
Transition

Evaluation

Release & Deployment Mgt

Change Management
Knowledge Management
Event Management

Service
Operation

Incident Management
Problem Management
Request Fulfillment

Access Management

Continual
Service
Improvement
(CSI)

Service Level Management

Service Measurement &
Reporting
Continual Service Improvement

170

Strategic thinking on how the portfolio should

be developed in future
Understand and influence customer demands
Idem V2
V2 : part of SLM
Essentially same as V2
Service review now in CSI
Dispersed in several processes.
V3 : Coordinated process
Idem V2
Idem V2
Idem V2
V3: Improved integration across Service
Lifecycle
V2 : Addressed within several processes
V2 : Covered within ICT Design & Planning
V2 : Covered within ICT Infrastructure
Management
V2: Configuration Mgt.
V2 Release Mgt extended
Plan & coordinate resources to ensure that
Service Strategy encoded into Service Design
are realized in Service Operations
Identify, manage and control risks of failure
and disruption across transition activities.
Ensure that the service will be useful to the
business
Set metrics & measurement to ensure
continued relevance of services
V2 Release Mgt extended
Essentially same as V2
New process in V3, previously included to some
extent in Problem Management
Part of Infrastructure Management in V2, has
been extended as the trigger for Incident &
Problem Mgt
Essentially same as V2
Essentially same as V2
New in V3.
V2 : Service Requests were treated by Incident
Mgt.
New in V3
V2: Part of Security Mgt
New in V3
V2: Treated partially in SLM

Figure A7.3 ITIL Service Support diagram ( OGC) [42]

171

Figure A7.4 ITIL Service Delivery diagram ( OGC) [42]

172

A8.

TM Forum NGOSS - Frameworx

The Tele-Management Forum (TMF), initially the Network Management Forum (NMF) is a
leading industry association of telecom operators and related industry actors focused on IT
solutions for communications Service Providers. TMF published the first release of the "New
Generation Operational Support Systems" (NGOSS) in 2001 and a Telecom Operations Map"
which evolved into eTOM in 2003. Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is at present
published by ITU-T as a series of Recommendations M.3050.
NGOSS is a Solution Framework for the enhancement of telecom providers business
operations, support processes and systems. It applies specifically to telecom operators or
similar Service Providers (internet, mobile services, etc.) but may be applied to any telecom
service provisioning such as those related to EPUs. It delivers a framework for producing new
generation OSS/BSS solutions, and a repository of documentation, models, and guidelines to
support these developments. The goal is to facilitate the rapid and less costly development of
flexible OSS/BSS solutions to meet the business needs of todays competitive and rapidly
evolving telecom environment.
TM Forum Frameworx Integrated Business Architecture was introduced in 2010 and provides
a master plan for the implementation of a Service Oriented Enterprise. Frameworx is designed
using service-oriented principles and supports major software standards such as ITIL (refer to
Appendix 7). It builds on the NGOSS Solution Framework releases with two additional major
documents: the Frameworx Statement of Direction (TM Forum TR155) and the Frameworx
Implementation Methodology (TM Forum GB945-M).
Frameworx Architecture

The Solution Frameworks provide communications industry specific process (eTOM),

information (SID), and application (TAM) frameworks united by an Integration Framework
which includes interfaces that support interoperability within and between distributed value
chain participants accompanied by a methodology describing how to use them. These
frameworks are described in the following paragraphs. There are various entry points in to the
frameworks based upon focus and needs of the frameworks user.

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TM Forum Solution Frameworks entry points

Frameworks are associated among themselves. The Integration Framework defines the
interaction between processes and entities in more detail by describing the interaction in terms
of details that characterize the entities, contained within Business Service (also known as
NGOSS Contract) and interface specifications and their implementations. A business service is
an element of functionality. The technical specifications within the Integration Framework
define how the services are described using common models.
The Solution Framework consists of four key components, which may be used standalone to
solve particular problems or together as an integrated end-to-end framework:

Business Process Framework (eTOM) provides a map of key processes, a common

language and process flows. It can be used to survey and assess existing processes of a
Service Provider, provide a framework for defining scope of a software-based solution,
or facilitate communications between a Service Provider and its system integrators and
suppliers.

Information Framework (SID) The Information Framework provides a common

language for software providers and integrators to use in describing management
information, which in turn allows easier and more effective integration across software
applications provided by multiple vendors. The Information Framework provides the
principles for a shared information model, as well as its elements and entities to provide
a system view of the information.

Integration Framework allows the integration of management applications provided

by multiple software vendors. It defines architectural principles allowing developers to
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create components, and Business Services (through APIs) for interfacing those
elements to each other across a technology-neutral architecture (it does not define
how to implement the architecture, but the principles that must be applied to be
Solution Frameworks compliant). In addition, the Integration Framework includes the
TM Forums library of Interfaces for integration of applications, and as the basis for the
Business Services Repository.

The Application Framework (TAM) defines the role and the functionality of the
various applications that deliver management capability. It can be used by Service
Providers to compare vendors solutions.

The Enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) developed by TM Forum has been published
by ITU-T as Recommendations M.3050.x .eTOM is a business process model or framework
for use by Service Providers and their suppliers and partners within the telecommunication
industry. It describes all the enterprise processes required by a Service Provider and analyses
them to different levels of detail according to their significance and priority for the business.
It is used to analyze existing business processes, to identify redundancy or gaps in the current
strategies, and to re-engineer processes correcting deficiencies and adding automation. We
shall refer to this component of the NGOSS solution framework in the ongoing analysis.
Frameworx Implementation Methodology

The Solution Frameworks Implementation Methodology provides a process and techniques to

assist an enterprise in defining evolution phases in the architecture. There is no standard
platform architecture. Each enterprise will have its own platform architecture based on the
business model under which it operates.
A platform is a grouping of services, people and roles. The key thing about a platform is that it
is a real implementable thing. Its definition reflects the focus of an enterprise and its toplevel approach to delivering service within the constraints imposed by a specific business
model, the value chains in which the enterprise operates. A platform is a device to manage the
complexity of an organizations processes and IT infrastructure. Platforms are the building
blocks of the enterprise architecture.
1. Business Process Framework

TM Forums Business Process Framework (commonly known as eTOM) is the industrys

common process architecture for both, business and functional processes. eTOM drives down
operational costs by analyzing all facets of an organizations processes, thereby eliminating
duplication, identifying missing process steps, expediting new development, and simplifying
procurement.
The TM Forum Business Process Framework serves as the master plan for process direction
and provides a neutral reference point for internal process reengineering needs, partnerships,
alliances, and general working agreements with other providers. The Business Process
Framework has being incorporated into ITU-T Recommendation M.3050 and has been
approved and published by ITU-T as an international standard.
Business Process Framework represents Service Provider's enterprise environment in a
hierarchy of process elements that capture process detail at various levels. At the conceptual

175

level, the framework has three major process areas, reflecting major focuses within typical
enterprises:

Strategy, Infrastructure, and Product, covering planning and lifecycle management

Operations, covering the core of operational management
Enterprise Management, covering corporate or business support management.

The Business Process Framework has multiple groupings for the processes that it contains:
Vertical process groupings: Focus on end-to-end activities (for example, Assurance).
Each vertical group links together the customer, supporting services, resources, and
supplier/partners. Taken together, these vertical groupings represent a lifecycle view
moving left to right across the Framework from the initial strategy for the products and
their components, through development and delivery, and on into operations and
billing.
Horizontal process groupings: Focus on functionally related areas, like Customer
Relationship Management. These groupings can be visualized as a layered view of
the enterprises processes, moving from top to bottom, with the customers and products
supported by the underlying services, resources, and (where relevant) interaction with
suppliers and partners.
Where a vertical process grouping and a horizontal process grouping intersect across
the map, further process detail can be applied in either that horizontal or vertical
context, according to the users needs.
The process structure in the Framework uses hierarchical decomposition, so that the business
processes of the enterprise are successively decomposed in a series of levels that expose
increasing detail. As an example, below is the process decomposition for Customer
Relationship Management. Detailed description of this example is beyond the scope of the
present document.

176

Service Providers are increasingly incorporating IT-based services and therefore need to bring
their IT and Business aspects closer together. To address this need, TM Forum together with
itSMF community (whose members develop ITIL, originally the IT Infrastructure Library)
have analyzed and defined integration of the two frameworks that leverages the best of both.
As a result, the Business Process Framework has embedded direct support for ITIL processes
by integrating these as Best Practices processes within the TM Forum Business Process
Framework.
One of the ways to use the Framework is to build process flows. While TM Forum does not
mandate how to build process flows it does provide recommendations. The figure below
illustrates a process flow fragment demonstrating how the Business Process Framework
integrates with ITIL Best Practices (in this case for ITIL Change Management applied to a
resource-oriented change) and includes low-level Business Process Framework elements
mapped against a background of ITIL process steps.

177

Using the Framework for drafting or evaluating process flows is not the only benefit. It can
serve as a master plan for process direction and provides a neutral reference point for internal
process reengineering, partnerships, alliances, and general working agreements with other
enterprises. It can be used as a standard structure, terminology, and classification scheme for
analyzing an organizations existing processes and for developing new processes.
TM Forum is developing Conformance Certification program against the Business Process
Framework (eTOM).
2. Information Framework

TM Forum's Information Framework (known as SID Shared Information and Data) provides
a common reference model and vocabulary for Enterprise information that is used to describe
management information. Information Framework provides concepts and principles needed to
define a shared information model, the entities of the model, as well as the business-oriented
UML class models (Unified Modeling Language), design-oriented UML class models, and
sequence diagrams that enable implementation of TM Forum Frameworx conformant service
oriented solutions.
The Information Framework scope covers all of the information required to implement
business processes in a Service Providers operations based on the Business Process
Framework (eTOM) processes. It focuses on what are called business entity definitions and
associated attribute definitions. A business entity is a thing of interest to the business, such as
customer, product, service, or network. Its attributes are facts that describe the entity. In short,
the Information Framework provides the model that represents business concepts and their
characteristics and relationships, described in an implementation independent manner.

178

As shown in figure xx, the framework is designed as a layered model, which partitions the
shared information and data into eight domains. At the top layer (Level 1), each of the eight
information domains is aligned with the Business Process Framework (eTOM). It enables
segmentation of the total business problem into manageable pieces and allows resources to be
focused on a particular area of interest. In other words, for a particular business process that is
to be automated it is possible to identify the information within the Framework that is needed
to support that process.
The Information Framework Product and Service domains have been adopted by the ITU and
are included in the ITU-T recommendation M.3190.
The Information Framework can be used as a standalone framework, or when used in
combination with the Business Process Framework (eTOM) it creates a bridge between the
business and the Information Technology (IT) groups by providing definitions that are
understandable by the business, but are also rigorous enough to be used for software
development. TM Forum is developing Conformance Certification program against the
Information Framework (SID) as well.
3. Application Framework

TM Forum's Application Framework (known also as TAM Telecom Application Map)

provides a common language between Service Providers and their suppliers to describe
systems and their functions, as well as a common way of grouping them. It provides the bridge
between Frameworx components, such as the Business Process and Information Frameworks,
and real applications by grouping process functions and information data into recognized OSS
and BSS applications or services.
In areas such as Fulfillment, Assurance, and Billing, the Applications Framework breaks out a
growing number of functional areas, including:
Customer Management
Service Management
Resource Management
Supplier/Partner Management
Enterprise Management
The Application Framework is not intended to be prescriptive or mandatory, however, it does
provide a lens to compare current implementations with an idealized approach. Wherever
possible, the Application Framework builds on TM Forum Frameworx particularly the
Business Process Framework (eTOM) and the Information Framework (SID). The Application
Framework uses identical layering concepts as the Business Process and Information
Frameworks. It also recognizes managed resources, including network-based resources,
content servers, Intelligent Network platforms, and related network control technologies (such
as element management systems), as well as the management applications infrastructure fabric
(e.g., bus technology or business process management engines). It provides a different
perspective from the process view or information view in these other frameworks, and allows a
company to advance their insight into the system design and implementation aspects of their
management solutions.

179

The high level view of the Application Framework is shown in figure A8.xx. Beside seven
horizontal layers (consistent with the Information Framework SID), it is also divided into four
vertical columns (consistent with the Business Process Framework eTOM). Each box on the
map represents a level 1 real Application such as Customer Order Management or Bill
Calculation.
The Applications Framework is further decomposed into lower levels of functionality which
is beyond the scope of the present document.
The complete listing of all available decompositions can be found in the Application
Framework document (Document Number: GB929). One of the prime benefits of using the
framework is the ability to identify and document the key attributes associated with each
application, which then enables Service Providers to understand fully the functionality they
already have within their organization. With this evaluation of applications, the Service
Provider has the information to make an informed choice.
The key uses of the Application Framework include:
Procurement: Service Providers can use it across the entire procurement processfrom
initial request for information, through systems comparison, to guidance for
implementation.
Product Positioning: It helps Suppliers position which systems they supply (TM Forum
maintains web based Product and Services Directory).
Streamlining IT/Operation Systems: It provides a map to rationalize and combine
application stovepipes across multiple technologies and services (e.g., mobile or fixed) .

180

Mergers and Acquisitions: It provides a common vocabulary and structure against

which merging organizations can map their systems.
Outsourcing: The Framework can be used to define precisely the boundaries between
interfacing applications, allowing more effective outsourcing of key functions.

4. Integration Framework

For todays Communications Service Provider, software rather than the network is the enabling
function. This is driving the rate of service innovation to new levels. To cope, Service
Providers are turning to software technologies, such as Service Oriented Architecture, and
industry standards to gain business agility and flexibility. These are provided by the TM Forum
Frameworx Integrated Business Architecture.

For further reference, the interested reader can refer to the following list of TM Forum
documents and packs:

RN303 Release notes for the Frameworx Release 8.1

TR155 Frameworx Statement of Direction Release 8.1
GB945-M Frameworx Implementation Methodology Release 8.1
RN311 Business Process Framework R8-1 Release Notes
GB921 Business Process Framework R8-1 Getting Started Pack
GB921 Business Process Framework R8-1 Domain Addenda Pack
TR143 eTOM and ITIL building bridges
RN310 Information Framework (SID) R8-1 Release Notes
GB922 Information Framework (SID) R8-1 Getting Started Pack
GB922 Information Framework (SID) R8-1 Domain Addenda Pack
RN315 Release Notes for Application Map Release 3.2
GB929, Telecom Application (TAM) Map, Release 3.2
RN316 Release Note for Integration Framework Release 2.1
GB942-CP Integration Framework Concepts and Principles
GB942-MAP Frameworx Mappings
GB942-U Integration Framework User Guidelines

181

A9.
Ac
ADSS
AGC
As
ATM
BCP
BSS
CAPEX
CBR
CCTA
CIP
CMDB
CMMI
COBIT
CRM
CWDM
DCS
DECT
DHCP
DM
DMS
DNS
DR
DRP
DSL
DWDM
EIA
EMC
EMS
EMS
EoPDH
EOS
EoSDH
EPR
EPU
ERP
ES
eTOM
EU
FCAPS
Fu
GIS
GPRS
GUI
HMI
IAAS
ICCP
ICT
IEC
IP
ISP

List of Acronyms
Accounting (& Billing) Process (Management)
All Dielectric Self Supporting Cable
Automatic Generation Control
Assurance Process (Management)
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Business Continuity Plan
Business Support System
Capital Expenditure
Constant Bit Rate
Central Computer & Telecommunication Agency (UK)
Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC)
Configuration Management Data Base
Capability Maturity Model Integration
Control Objectives for Information (and related) Technologies
Customer Relation Management
Course Wavelength Division Multiplexing
Digital (Substation) Control System
Digital Enhanced (previously European) Cordless Telephone
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
Degraded Minutes
Distribution Management System
Domain Name System
Disaster Recovery
Disaster Recovery Plan
Digital Subscriber Loop
Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing
Electronic Industries Alliance (US)
Electromagnetic Compatibility
Energy Management System
Element Management System
Ethernet over PDH
see EoSDH
Ethernet over SDH
Earth Potential Rise
Electrical Power Utility
Enterprise Resource Planning
Errored Seconds
Enhanced Telecom Operations Map
European Union
Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance and Security Management
Fulfilment Process (Management)
Geographical Information System
General Packet Radio Service
Graphical User Interface
Human Machine Interface
Infrastructure as a Service
Inter-Control Centre Protocol
Information and Communication Technology
International Electrotechnical Commission
Internetwork Protocol
Internet Service Provider

182

ISO
ITIL
itSMF
ITU
KPI
LAN
LLA
LSP
MARS
MPLS
MPLS-TP
MSP
N-CMDB
NE
NERC
NGN
NGOSS
NMF
NMS
NOC
NSO/RSO
OAM
OGC
OHL
OLA
OPEX
OPGW
OSPF
OSS
OTDR
OTN
PAAS
PBB-TE
P/C
PDH
PLC
PMU
PSTN
PTT
QoS
RAS
RIP
ROADM
ROI
RSTP
RTU
SAAS
SAS
SCADA
S-CMDB
SDH
SES
SIPS
SIR
SLA
SNCP

Independent System Operator

Information Technology Infrastructure Library
IT Service Management Forum
International Telecommunication Union
Key Performance Indicator
Local Area Network
Logical Layered (Management) Architecture
Label Switched Path
Multiple Address Radio System
Multi-Protocol Label Switching
MPLS Transmission Profile
Multiplex Section Protection
Network Configuration Management Data Base
Network Element
North American Electric Reliability Corporation
Next Generation Networks
Next Generation Operation Support System
Network Management Forum (now Tele-management Forum)
Network Management System
Network Operation Centre
National (or Regional) System Operator
Operation, Administration and Maintenance
Office of Government Commerce (UK)
Overhead Line
Operational Level Agreement
Operation Expenditure
Optical Ground Wire Cable
Open Shortest Path First
Operation Support System
Optical Time Domain Reflectometer
Optical Transport Network
Platform as a Service
Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Engineering
Providers / Contractors
Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy
Power Line Carrier
Phasor Measurement Unit
Public Switched Telephone Network
Push to Talk
Quality of Service
Remedial Action Scheme
Routing Information Protocol
Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexer
Return on Investment
Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol
Remote Terminal Unit
Software as a Service
Substation Automation System
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
Service Configuration Management Data Base
Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
Severely Errored Seconds
System Integrity Protection Scheme
Service Initialization Request
Service Level Agreement
Sub-Network Connection Protection (SDH)

183

SNMP
SOA
SOC
SPD
STP
Su
TASE
TCP
TDM
TETRA
TMF
TMN
TSO
UDP
UPS
UTC
U-Telco
uTOM
VIU
VLAN
VoIP
VPN
VSAT
WAMS
WAP&C
WDM

Simple Network Management Protocol

Service Oriented Architecture
Security Operational Centre
Surge Protection Device
Spanning Tree Protocol
Support Process (Management)
Telecontrol Application Service Element
Transmission Control Protocol
Time Division Multiplex
TErrestrial (previously Trans-European) Trunked Radio
TeleManagement Forum
Telecommunication Management Network
Transmission System Operator
User (or Universal) Datagram Protocol
Uninterruptable Power Supply
Utilities Telecom Council (US)
Utility Telecommunication Company
Utility Telecom Operations Map
Vertically Integrated Utility
Virtual Local Area Network
Voice over IP
Virtual Private Network
Very Small Aperture (Satellite) Terminal
Wide Area Monitoring System
Wide Area Protection and Control
Wavelength Division Multiplexing

184

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6
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Ch 1
Ch 1
Ch 1
Ch 1, 3, 4
and 5
Ch 1 & 2
and 3.2
2.1
3.1
3.2.5
3.5.1
4.6
4.6, 5.5.2
8.2.3
4.6

5.2.2
5.2.3, 7.6
5.3
Ch 6
6.4

6.5
6.6
6.6

21

22

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24

25

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27
28

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30

31
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34
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37
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6.8

7.2

7.3

7.4.4

7.5

8.2
8.2

9.3.2

9.3.4

9.3.4
10.2.1
10.2.2

10.2.2
10.2.2
10.3.1
10.3.1
10.3.1
10.3.2, A7
10.3.3

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42

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45

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47

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49
50
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53
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187

10.3.4
10.3.5, A7

10.7.1,
10.7.3

10.7.2

10.7, A6

10.7.4
12.3

12.3

12.4
12.4
12.4
12.5

12.5
A3

A4