George Robert's Email, additional comments

I'd like to join  Bill Rush and Ted Yord comment George Robert's Email on
C12.19.

I agree with Ted and Bill that adopting standards only at the MDMA interface
would not be in the best interest of Direct Access Customers.

The last Plenary voted C12.18 for those devices with optical ports.  This
protocol was designed to transport tables (read table, write table) and it
only makes sense that the tables transported should be the Standard Tables
(C12.19).  Adopting C12.18 without C12.19 doesn't make any sense to me.

Likewise, C12.21 will soon go to ballot and is a straightforward extension
of C12.18 to transport tables over the telephone network.  Given the
potential geographical separation of ESP's and customers, a meter with phone
modem is a natural choice for Direct Access metering and C12.21 will become
a powerful force for interoperability in this environment.

C12.19 tables define a data format only - a stated design goal of this
standard was that the table descriptions would be independent from the
communications protocol(s) used to transport them.  

As to radio systems, we're not there yet but we're well on our way.  In
C12.22, we are addressing transporting tables efficiently over a generic
network (radio, PLC, Internet).  In addition, at Tablefest II in San Jose,
submissions were made by Itron and EPRI to address transport of bit level
data in table format to conserve bandwidth.  I am confident that the
combined effort of these committees will be able to work through the
technical details and be successful in their goal of building a workable
blueprint for networking C12.19 devices.    

California has wisely decided to unbundle the meter reading function with
hopes that the market will reduce meter reading costs and bring more value
to Direct Access customers.  I fail to see how this will happen if builders
of Meter Reading and Meter Data Management Systems have to support a
plethora of proprietary protocols, application languages and data
representations in order to interface with the range of metering products in
the field.  I strongly feel that standardizing protocols and data formats at
the Meter Interface will result in reduced costs and increased choice to
Direct Access customers.   

Jack Pazdon			
GE Meter, NPI Software Development
130 Main Street, Somersworth, NH 03878		
Phone: 603-749-8573  DialComm 8-262-5573  
Fax:     603-749-5240  DialComm 8-262-8240
jack.pazdon@edc.ge.com

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