An amendment has been made to the Telecommunications Labelling (Customer Equipment and Customer Cabling) Notice 2001.  These changes will have little impact on the majority of products placed on the Australian market, the most significant being the separation of the Customer Switching System standard S003 into 3 individual standards.  

The S003 standard applies to Customer Access Equipment (CAE) that is:
a) designed with multiple ports (local or network) that provides or is intended to provide access (gateway functions) to a Telecommunications Network; and
b) capable of switching, storage, processing, conversion, integration, line isolation/coupling or multiplexing of analogue or digital voice or voice equivalent communication.”

Examples include PBX, VoIP gateways and adaptors, cable/optical/mobile broadband terminals with analogue local phone ports.

The technical requirements of AS/CA S003:2010 are essentially the same as those in previous versions and the amendments are largely editorial changes and additions made to clarify the standard. This includes dividing the standard into 3 parts:

Part 1: General – consisting of all S003 requirements other than the transmission clauses.
Part 2: Analogue and TDM based – Transmission requirements for non-packet based CAE e.g. traditional PABXs. This is equivalent to S003:2005 Clause 5.5 with an alternative and preferred loss plan.
Part 3: Packet and cell based – Transmission requirements for packet based CAE e.g. VoIP gateways, which are almost the same as those specified in S003:2006 and S003:2008.

S003:2010 clarifies and consolidates the TDM/analogue and packet based requirements that were previously divided between S003:2005 and S003:2006/2008.

Austest labs in Sydney and Melbourne and Harvest Labs in Auckland are accredited and ACMA RTA listed for testing the above products.