Dooley, Brendan
2003-May-11 19:05 UTC
[Asterisk-Users] Ha, just found a way around australia approv als......
Gary,
I apologise for this long post - but as there appears to be ongoing rounds
of speculation as to what would be legal to use in Australia, I thought I
try and provide some clarification from what I know about legislative
requirements.
Please note that as we manufacture E1-E1 drop and insert type products we
have a vested interested in potentially being able to provide our products
as part of a package to allow the Digium equipment to be used legally here.
To start off - I am reasonably confident that the Digium products would be
illegal to use in Australia regardless of how you connect them to the
network (ie directly or indirectly through third party CPE such as a hosted
switch or our E1 unit). It may even be illegal to use them in a fully
private environment.
Starting at a high level the two basic certifications of relevance are
C-tick and A-tick.
C-Tick is used to show compliance with ACA radiotelecommunications and EMC
standards. (ie electrical safety and emissions)
A-tick indicates whether the product complies with all relevant technical
standards (protocol conformance, tone and level compliance, etc, etc)
As far as I am aware the Digium products do not have C-tick or A-tick
approval.
It is clear (and obvious) that the Digium products are covered by the
standards - especially when considering direct connection. This is the first
hurdle as products imported into Australia that are covered by the standards
(eg ISDN interface boards) that are not certified are also required to have
a non-compliance label with a prominently display company ACN as well as a
notice with the words:
WARNING
IT IS ILLEGAL TO CONNECT THIS ITEM TO ANY
TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK OR FACILITY
Regarding whether there is a requirement to have the product approved if it
is not directly connected to the network, it has always been our
understanding (having manufactured and approved many products locally) that
it is required if the product is covered by the standards. This has also
been confirmed on the numerous occasions we have been audited by Telecom and
the ACA.
A list of the standards is relevant here:
http://www.aca.gov.au/telcomm/stds/infolst.htm
Please note that the standards are very broad and even devices that have a
pure acoustic coupling still require certification (ACIF S004-2001 Acoustic
Coupling)
In relation to indirectly connecting the Digium products, the following
product categories would still apply:
Category B Equipment or interface, that is part of customer equipment,
designed for direct connection to a telecommunications network or facility
operated by a carrier or a carriage service provider for the purposes of
communication.
Category C Equipment connected by other customer equipment to a
telecommunications network or facility operated by a carrier or
carriage service provider for the purposes of communication
In Category C - several standards apply including the following:
Item Technical standard Compliance level
System integral ACA TS001-1997 3
Terminal supplied ACA TS004-1997 3
separately AS/ACIF S043-2001 2
Brendan
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Wolven [mailto:dwolven@123.net]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 3:41 PM
To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Ha, just found a way around australia
approvals......
On Thu, 2003-05-08 at 22:15, Gary wrote:> For you aussies on the list :-)
>
> I have been looking for a solution around the approval problem.
>
> Now today I had a long discussion with my carrier who would be
> providing services to an asterisk box with hopefully an E400P in it....
> As all the equipment are on their premises (my in their colo facility)
> and we are pluging directly into their switch, we only have to meet
> their switch requirements and austel approval is not required in this
> case.
>
> Think about it, think outside the square, sometimes the answer is
> staring at you !!
>
> Telstra ---- forget it folks :-)
>
> Gary
> .
Of course you could pickup a cheap drop and insert csu/dsu...
Your Digium card would then not be connected directly to the PSTN.
If it works for the goose.....
Dave
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