***********From John Woodgate*************** It's the fear of legal action that causes people to press for answers. It isn't acceptable for legislation to be so obscure that courts have to
decide what it means. Are the issues under discussion really 'grey areas'? The discussion that I have seen seems not to be centred on anything in particular. If someone can pose a *specific* question (or several), answers demonstrable from the wording of the Directive may be possible. ******************************************** I'll agree with you on that, John. I'll try to make the question as specific as possible; but you'll probably see that different categories of equipment under the same company may be treated differently. For us (Nettest) the specific question regards the applicability of RoHS to Network Test Equipment falling under the following three categories: Portable Fiber Optic Test Equipment, including: OTDR's (Optical Time Domain Reflectometers), Power Meters, Light Sources, Optical Attenuators, Optical Spectrum Analyzers, Optical Channel Analyzers... et al. These would typically be used by field personnel in the fiber optics communications business, cable TV business, ISPs... Fixed Fiber Optic Test Equipment...We make a line of equipment that is based on a rack-mount CPCI chassis and installed at a CO (Central Office). This equipment continually monitors many fibers for problems. Network Monitoring Equipment...We make a line of equipment that can monitor various copper networks, including HSSI, Serial, DS3, E3, E1, T1, GIGE... This equipment is also rack-mounted, based upon a PCI chassis. This equipment would typically be installed either at a CO or at a central location in a LAN or WAN, it would be operated by IT types. For the last two categories of equipment...it may be hard for us to comply with RoHS, since we purchase chassis from companies that may be depending upon the WEEE and RoHS exemptions for network servers. This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
