The PRIME ALLIANCE (PRIME = PoweRline Intelligent Metering Evolution) is a membership led group of key industry players, formed to develop an open and future-proofed communications infrastructure to support large-scale metering and other Smart Grid projects. The goal of the Alliance is to provide a framework in which vendors of meters, data concentrators, in-home devices and chipsets, can access fully open physical layer (PHY) and Medium Access Control (MAC) specifications in order to design fully interoperable solutions, allowing multiple vendors to be operational within the same distribution network in one common system platform.