Radio and telecom

Radio and telecom equipment is the product group with the least mutual recognition anywhere, and the Eurasian Economic Union shows why. Five states run a unified certification system in which an EAC document issued in one is valid in all of them, yet only just over forty technical regulations have been harmonised, and use of the radio frequency spectrum is not among them. Neither is safe operation on public access networks. Both remain under each member state’s own law, so a connected device needs the Union safety assessment and separate national permission in every country it will be delivered to.

At national level that means up to three further documents. A Radio Frequency Centre conclusion, which is the radio approval proper. A declaration or certificate of compliance for communication equipment. And an encryption notification covering any cryptographic capability, a standardised document recognised in any member state and handled by whichever agency is responsible for state security there, the National Security Committee in Kazakhstan among them. Belarus adds TR 2018/024/BY on the security of telecommunication equipment, which allows both a declaration and a certificate, and which sometimes permits testing the embedded module alone so that samples clear customs more easily.

The question that comes up more often than any other is whether a radio module can be approved once and reused across a range. It cannot. Every route here ends at the finished product, because radiated power depends on the complete assembly and on which antenna is fitted to it. The regulator confirmed as much in writing to us: a test report validating the final device containing the module can serve as the evidence. What is reusable is that evidence. The same radiated measurements and EMC reports feed several applications when they were produced against the standard the destination applies.

A computer or a similar mains-powered device carries a second stack beside the radio one: a certificate under TR CU 004/2011 and TR CU 020/2011 on scheme 1c, 3c or 4c according to whether you are shipping series production, one batch or a single unit, and a RoHS declaration under TR EAEU 037/2016, where scheme 1D accepts your own factory reports and 3D forces testing inside the Union. Note the boundary: TR CU 004/2011 reaches 50 to 1000 V AC and 75 to 1500 V DC, so equipment on self-contained power can fall outside it. The articles below work each stack through in full.