RoHS Background

The European Union’s Directive 2002/95/EC “Restriction of certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment” (RoHS) will become effective for all products placed on the EU market after July 1, 2006. Additionally, countries in other parts of the world are also considering similar RoHS type legislation that mirrors the EU directive.

The RoHS directive imposes restrictions on the content of various heavy metals and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). The list of restricted substances in electrical and electronics includes the following:

• Hexavalent chromium (Cr+6)
• Cadmium (Cd)
• Mercury (Hg)
• Lead (Pb)
• Polybrominated Biphenyl (PBB) and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether (PBDE) flame retardants

The RoHS directive applies to 8 broad categories of electrical and electronic equipment, as described in Annex-A of the complimentary directive 2002/96/EC on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). Two other categories of equipment within this annex are exempt from RoHS compliance at this time, and these are:

Category (8): Medical devices.

Category (9): Monitoring and Controlling Instruments

Sunrise Telecom’s Position on RoHS compliance

Sunrise Telecom products belong to category (9), Monitoring and Controlling Instruments, and are therefore exempt from RoHS requirements until the year 2010. Due to concerns in the reliability of lead-free solder for products with long lifecycles, Sunrise Telecom will not transition to use lead-free solder by July 01, 2006 for its test, measurement, monitoring, and control instruments. However, Sunrise Telecom will continue to closely study the reliability of lead-free solder, and will make the transition when more reliability data has been established by the industry.

Sunrise Telecom is committed to delivering test and measurement (T&M) equipment with advanced capabilities, high quality and reliability. Our typical customers are equipment engineering organizations within the Telecommunications Service Providers. They rely on Sunrise Telecom to provide cutting edge test equipment, built with components that have advanced performance capabilities. These capabilities enable our customers to deploy and verify evolving and leading edge services which often precede the widespread availability or deployment of these services to the general public.

Like many test and measurement equipment manufacturers, Sunrise Telecom is confronted with the risk of switching to lead-free solder technology for which the best available chemistry and long-term reliability remains unproven. We are also challenged with the task of redesigning our existing product line with critical components that may have no suitable RoHS compliant alternative. Where possible RoHS alternatives do exist, the large engineering effort required to evaluate the effects on performance by each of these components will significantly distract us from our ability to design and deliver newer test technology in a timely manner to satisfy our customers’ needs to keep pace with a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Sunrise Telecom is committed to being environmentally responsible, and is eager to evaluate and use RoHS compliant components, wherever possible, for our future product designs.

WEEE Directive Status

While we expect our products to have a very long and useful lifespan of well over 10 -15 years, Sunrise Telecom also aims to minimize the environmental impact of products when they reach their end of life. When you decide your Sunrise Telecom product has reached the end of its product lifecycle, we encourage you to send the product to Sunrise Telecom for reuse and/or recycling.

China RoHS

As of 1-Mar-07, Sunrise Telecom Inc has met China RoHS declaration requirements identifying which of the 6 elements are present. Currently products being sold in China have an EFUP (Environment Friendly Use Period). The date of manufacture for a given product is contained within the serial number, and is YY/WW format. The barcode serial number will start off with a series of alpha-numeric characters, then date, followed by unit serial number. Example: SLE10705478, SLE1 is the model, 0705 is date of manufacture, and 478 is unit number. 0705 is YY/WW, so unit was build in year 2007 during 5th week (week of 29th January).

 

Contact Information

For questions about Sunrise Telecom's RoHS & WEEE compliance initiative, please contact Sunrise Telecom’s Quality Department at 1.408.363.8000 or quality@sunrisetelecom.com.