In the widest sense, safety is a top priority matter for us as human beings.
The term safety does have many facets, also when it comes to electrical/electronic consumer products. In the beginning and for many decades, it only concerned the hazards of fire/burning and electrocution. Then radio disturbance was added and gradually became an issue of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) between equipment with sensitive electronics in general. During the last 2-3 decades, more aspects/features have been added, whereby today, matters such as hazardous substances, exposure to electromagnetic fields and cyber security can also be related to ‘product safety.
We naturally want to believe that the products we buy and use today are safe and that safety is constantly improving.
The market analysis as described in the first article below may suggest otherwise.
How safe are the electrical products on the market?
The European Single Market with the EU and EFTA member countries, has developed over more than 40 years through various regulations and practices. In 2008, the New Legislative Framework was introduced to further operationalize the principle of free movement of goods with a guarantee of only safe products on the market.
In December last year,the Philippines Department of Energy (DOE) published a Circular (No. DC2022-11-0035) which announced additional products into the Philippine Energy Labeling Program (PELP). The overall program covers most types of electrical appliances, including household, personal care, electronics, lighting and solar. (The full list of products is contained in Annex B of the Circular which can be accessed here).
Type approval procedures in Botswana for telecom equipment are regulated by the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA). BOCRA published recently new guidelines which outline the conditions a device must meet in order to be approved for use in the country.
- Exemption of test parameters for certain product types.
According to anMTCTEOffice Memorandum issued on 29 March this year the Indian telecom authorityTEChas, with immediate effect, exempted some test parameters for IP Multimedia Conferencing Equipment, LAN Switches & IoT Gateways.
- Provisional certificate possible for certain product types
Then on 18 April this year,TEC issued a Notification (No.6-6/2021-TC/TEC) regarding the possibility to issue provisional certificates for Routers, LAN Switches, and DWDM equipment having specialized test requirements.
The CB scheme statistics for 2022 have now been published
The recently released statistics by the IECEE, shows that a total of 111 843 international CB Test Certificates (CBTCs) were issued in 2022. This is a slight drop compared to the previous year, while the graph here shows the impressive annual growth in the number of CBTCs issued annually over the past 26 years.
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Hopefully, you are finding these topics to be of interest.
