Utility Networks:
The inherent risksof doing nothingThanks to all of our contributing members, including these UBBA members:

Introduction
Today’s utilities are becoming more and more dependent on data, real-time data, tooperate their networks safely and efficiently. Many utilities are currently evaluating theautomation and modernization of their communications systems. Utilities have a needfor secure and reliable communications systems to be able to manage their networks
and to continue to be able to provide customer benefits now and into the future.
With the use of smart meters, the customer base is also getting smarter about theirpower usage, they are looking for detailed and real-time information to get compensatedfor voluntarily cutting back on their usage at peak times. The rollout of services such asthese is impractical without a secure wireless network that can affordably and securely
provide utilities with reliable connectivity to a wide variety of devices.
A recent survey conducted by the Utility Broadband Alliance (UBBA) to gather
feedback on broadband infrastructure strategies, challenges and needs from mid-level
management to the executive level at various utilities revealed a "lack of education on
the issues" as the greatest challenge in supporting a broadband network as well as a"lack in communication network expertise." One of the goals of this paper is to raise theawareness within the utility community of the benefits, pain points and the prioritizationof a strategic communications roadmap addressing the opportunities and challenges
presented herein.
Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing2

Why do organizations delay transformation?
Historically, the challenging process of decision-making among businessleaders has been driven by calculating the return on investment (ROI)
of a given decision—this is also true within utilities. While delaying an
infrastructure upgrade may appear to be a prudent decision to reduce
capital expenditures in the near term, it is fraught with significant financial
risk in the long run.
Here are some of the reasons organizations delay transformation:• Reactive mindset: The fear of not wanting to "rock the boat" bychanging something before it’s time, this often ends up doing more
harm than good. The lack of proactively seeking outside perspectivesto identify where the organization is falling behind and taking action
and making investments into the business, people, technology andworkflow processes in order to bring about positive change. Most
utilities react after major events occur and lessons learned areimplemented. The reactive mindset thinks ‘if it isn’t broke—then don’t
fix it’, the reality is that you ensure reliability by investing in it before
these major events occur.
• Organizational changes: Identifying an engaged sponsor to spearhead
new initiatives is critical for a successful transformation. However,reorganizations often end up postponing any progress due to changes
in the leadership team where successors may not have, for example,
the same vision valuing investments for smart grid initiatives.
• Risk aversion: Investor-owned companies generally create value forstakeholders by making informed, yet somewhat risky investments.
Utilities often avoid risk at all cost and implement ideas of marginal
improvements and in conservative investments—focusing on tried andtrue solutions 'firstgate’ to try instead of trying something new.

On the flipside, there are many more reasons to consider acommunications infrastructure upgrade, as will be discussed further andinclude: regulatory compliance, cyber security, aging infrastructure andworkforce, natural weather disasters, and decarbonization. Utilities needto prioritize generating a strategic communications roadmap that will
enable them to meet these challenges.

Regulatory compliance
The regulatory environment is constantly changing, whether it is insupport of real-time metering or other customer benefits. Yesterday’s
infrastructure capabilities are lagging behind upcoming technologies andpolicy development while state governing bodies are seeking to sync
policy with a rapidly changing energy market.
Several states are finding that these technologies and practices are
outpacing regulatory policy and that changes are needed to appropriately
value their contributions, or costs, to the grid. While the changes are
significant and rapid, in the case of energy for example, most electricity
is still provided by large central power plants and the ultimate balance ofcentralized and distributed energy resources is yet to be determined.
The challenges facing state policymakers are how to craft policies
that promote cost-effective investment in the electricity system whileallowing innovative technologies and new energy management
approaches to flourish and compete in a rapidly shifting environment.
This effort will require states and regions to adapt their policy regimes
and infrastructure, which were designed for a centralized energy gridwith one-way energy flows to its end customers. Today, they must craft
policy that will function with a less centralized electrical system thatincorporates multi-directional energy flows between energy providers
and customers (or even directly between customers or other entities) andincludes a far greater number of market participants.

Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing3Security
Continuity of supply and safe operation is of paramount importancefor utilities. With ransomware hacking of utilities’ IT and OT networks
in the news, this is a critical and growing issue. Security is of equal
importance to wireless networks. LTE networks have multiple layersof very advanced security built into the RF links to remove risks ofunwanted attacks. It is a tried and trusted technology with broad devicecompatibility. Additionally, a private network allows implementing deeper
security protocols at the level needed to protect the data.
A disastrous incident in May of 2021 is a prime example of what canhappen when security is breached. Colonial Pipeline (one of the largest
pipeline providers in the U.S. that provides roughly 45% of the East
Coast’s fuel) stated a cyber-attack forced the company to proactively
close down operations and freeze IT systems after becoming the victimof a cyberattack. This measure temporarily halted all pipeline operations.
Ultimately, Colonial pipeline paid close to USD 5 million in a cyber ransom.

Aging infrastructure and workforce
The traditional network deployment for utilities is disparate for various
reasons: mergers and acquisitions, legacy systems managing different
aspects of the utilities infrastructure and mission-critical applications
including voice, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA),
advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and backhaul. These missioncritical networks have proven to be resilient, reliable and require minimal
maintenance or upgrades over time. However, many are nearing end-of-life and in need of a tried and tested replacement that can accommodate
the breadth and depth of digital transformation. In addition, many
subject matter experts who support these systems are also aging outof the workforce. As these resources retire, they take their institutional
knowledge with them—presenting challenges for the operation ofnetworks as well the cost to hire or re-train employees.
With these disparate networks, the wireless technologies vary from land
mobile radios (LMR), licensed and unlicensed spectrum , and meshradios to high-capacity point to point radios. Historically, these radios
have been proprietary to vendor-specific implementations. In turn, thishas created fear within the industry that key connectivity technologies
needed for a utilities application will become prematurely obsolete.
As such, there is an emerging trend towards converging these networks
into a singular high-speed, low-latency, highly secure, standards-based
private LTE network. LTE is based on a 3GPP standard and unlike
proprietary networks, it has been reviewed and tested by hundreds of
network providers around the world, ensuring that the built in network
security is robust.
Private LTE networks provide utilities with an economical solution thatenables them to consolidate most or all of their applications onto a single
network standard. With only one standard to build and operate, the total
cost of ownership is lower than maintaining multiple single use networks.
Due to its ability to provide high-bandwidth, low latency and improved
performance capabilities for digital transformation initiatives, private LTE
networks have the power to greatly reduce operating expenses related toaging infrastructure upgrades.

Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing4Natural weather disasters
A report released August 2021 by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) stated that global warming is dangerously closeto spiraling out of control, warning the world is already certain to face
further climate disruptions for decades, if not centuries, to come. The
deadly heat waves, major hurricanes and other extreme weather events
that are already happening will only become more frequentand severe.
The catastrophic grid failure in Texas in early 2021 (Winterstorm Uri)
is another dangerous example of what can happen if utilities don't planahead and take actions to invest in infrastructure to keep up with thetimes. The root cause of the problems in Texas are well documented to
be a combination of energy sources (gas facilities and coal piles) that
became frozen combined with increased demand due to extremely cold
temperatures and limited inter-grid connectivity to import power fromother ISO regions.
It was exceptionally costly, from loss of life, restricted or limited powerand heat, and inflicting at least USD 38 billion in excess electricity costs
and an estimated USD 200 billion in economic damages. According toanalysis firm Grid Strategies, given those dynamics, the costs to build out

more transmission lines would have more than paid for itself by bringing
in additional power when Texas desperately needed it. It would havehelped them better manage how the limited electricity was distributed
to customers.2 A modernized grid based on a 900MHz private LTE
could have provided the feedback needed to better distribute the limited
electricity to customers.
Hurricane Sandy is another example that frames how much room there
is for improvement in the utilities arena. While it’s not possible to prevent
natural disasters such as storms, it is possible to improve readiness via
disaster recovery planning in order to restore systems to an operational
state while minimizing outages.3
In the case of natural disasters, the need for dedicated networks
becomes more apparent and is not isolated to the United States.
There are many overseas scenarios, including the Darwin and Ophelia
storms in 2014 and 2017 respectively, where much of Ireland waswithout power and electricity services that could not be restored without
telecommunication services. During the country's 400Mhz auction
process, Ireland's TSO (EirGrid) urged the Irish telecoms regulator(ComReg) for a dedicated smart grid network stating, "In such a situation
EirGrid cannot depend on public communication networks as these may
be compromised by a widespread and prolonged power outage.”4,5

2 Julian Spector, “Newsletter: Texas outages made transmission upgrades look cheap,” Canary Media, 27 July 2021.
3 Nicholas C. Abi-Samra, “One Year Later: Superstorm Sandy Underscores Need for a Resilient Grid,” IEEE Spectrum, 4 Nov. 2013.
4 Christina Finn, “Storm Ophelia: Households should prepare to be without power for a number of days,” TheJournal.ie, 16 Oct. 2017.
5 “The Power of Communications: ESB’s Response to Storm Darwin,” Electricity Supply Board, 2014.

Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing5Decarbonization
Many large utilities have faced pressure from their investors to takemeasures in order to secure their position of survivability throughclimate-related transitional and physical risks. While many utilities
are setting aggressive targets, the majority of them are also counting
on major advances in related technologies—such as carbon captureand sequestration, advanced nuclear reactors, green hydrogen,longer-lasting battery storage, and carbon offset credits—to achieve
their ambitious goals. The takeaway here is that increased pollution
will come as a result of inaction or failure to pursue decarbonization
initiatives including advanced communications systems.

RF technology advances
In 2020, many utilities were actively participating in the Citizens
Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) auctions and now with the availabilityof the 900MHz broadband spectrum, they have two complimentary
spectrum bands available. This is a game changer enabling utilities toadvance into the private LTE wireless space.
The trend among utilities is to use a combination of 900MHz broadband
spectrum for private LTE networks and 3.5GHz (CBRS) spectrum forapplications that require higher bandwidths. Public LTE options are alsoavailable but are not within the control of the utility. Use of a globally
adopted and managed 3GPP standards, like LTE and 5G NR, allows theutilities to minimize infrastructure costs over the long-term, partially dueto economies of scale.
Utilities are looking to use the combination of CBRS and 900MHz
broadband spectrum to build out private wireless networks to enable their
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems, active monitoring ofnetwork infrastructure (substations, remote facilities, generators, and thelike), and provide wireless coverage for their field service personnel andthe proliferation of Distributed Energy Resources (DER).

Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing

6Recommendations
Utilities need to prioritize a strategic communications roadmap
addressing the opportunities and challenges presented herein.
If they can take the challenges mentioned here seriously
and advance the use of private LTE networks, they will havesignificantly more flexibility, scaleability and control managing
their networks. Private LTE has the potential to unify the utilities’communications networks across their entire geographic
footprints, while increasing the coverage and bandwidth for LTE
and IoT applications.
Here are just some of the use cases where a private LTE
network can prove beneficial:• enabling new and future smart grid technologies for bothcritical and non-critical system operations• supporting customer affordability by investing capital in lieu
of O&M-based cellular services• leveraging their network by providing access to other criticalinfrastructure industries such as water and gas utilitities• complimenting Land Mobile Radios (LMR) for missioncritical communications and worker safety• providing last mile access to broadband services forunderserved and rural communities and the potential tounlock new revenue streams
Utility-grade private LTE networks leverage the same technology
as public LTE networks but offer several advantages in ownereconomics and rate recovery on capital. Private networks aredesigned to cover the needs of the utility. The combination of data
privacy, security, flexibility, high capacity, quality of service (QoS),
deterministic latency and coverage make private networks well
suited for utilities’mission-critical applications.
As Benjamin Franklin once said “If you fail to plan, you areplanning to fail.” Utilities must act to strategically address
the challenges presented in this paper, for utilities criticalcommunications networks—doing nothing is no longer an option.

Special Thanks to Contributing
Writers:
Alpha Wireless: Tim Sill, Luke Kehoe, Philip Brennan
Anterix: Kevin Malloy
Ericsson: Jennie Bratten, Ivana Ganguri
NYPA: Jerry Gentry
Telit: Jitender Vohra
And the UBBA Business Working Group

Today’s Utilities Networks: Inherent risks of doing nothing7www.ubba.com