Chipset manufacturer Ikanos has launched a new speed test option for carriers to get a clearer picture of the data rates they are delivering, without the confounding factors of the home Wi-Fi connection or slowness across the Internet rather than in the service provider’s network.
According to Andy Weitzner, director of marketing for Ikanos, most speed tests that can be run from a smartphone or PC on a home broadband connection give an end-to-end view all the way to the device. That level of knowledge is useful, he said, but “doesn’t help the carrier identify if they are delivering the service they said they would” from the network to the consumer’s residential gateway. The Gigabit Speed Test offering runs between the home gateway and a server in the carrier network, so that carriers can do initial troubleshooting on whether a bottleneck originates with the carrier network, their own Wi-Fi connection, or the Internet.
“This allows them to see what they’re delivering to the home and start isolating the problem before [a tech] shows up,” Weitzner said.
• Anritsu reported profits down 15% for its fiscal year ended March 31, with revenue down 3%.
The company said that the main factors responsible for decreased profit include “increased investment in R&D in both the T&M and industrial automation businesses” to expand sales overseas, as well as putting more money into overseas customer support. More details on the company’s finances are available in this presentation.
You can also look through the company’s presentation from President and CEO Hirokazu Hashimoto on its midterm business plan here. According to the presentation, between 2012-2014 “there were significant changes in the business environment for the mobile T&M market. Rapid and simultaneous advancement of both high functionality and commoditization of [terminals] resulted in intensified competition among market players, as well as mergers and acquisitions and withdrawals from the business.”
The presentation also provides some high-level insight into the trends that Anritsu sees impacting the test ecosystem, including the expansion of broadband connectivity, the “Internet of Things,” and 5G. Anritsu reported that 50% of its testing business was in mobile testing, and another 30% in network infrastructure testing. Its largest geographic markets were Asia and the Pacific (excluding Japan), which accounted for 35% of its business, with another 30% originating in the Americas.
• As a follow-up from last week’s test and measurement news related to the Voice over LTE benchmarking that P3 Communications is conducting in the Washington, D.C., area, I interviewed the company’s CEO, Dirk Bernhardt – check out that story and the video interview here.
• Keysight Technologies launched a new software platform for wafer-level components as a result of collaboration with Cascade Microtech. Cascade’s Velox 2.0 probe station control software is integrated into the offering, called WaferPro Express 2015.
Keysight said that high-volume characterization of wafer-level devices and circuit components is moving further into research and development, beyond the manufacturing environment, because many R&D teams now “measure high-volume data for applications such as device modeling, process monitoring, reliability and component characterization; often at different temperatures.”
Charles Plott, marketing manager for Keysight EEs of EDA, said that the new software offering “represents a major milestone in our program to provide wafer-level measurement solutions to our customers.”
• In other test and measurement news this week, Rohde & Schwarz received recognition from Frost & Sullivan on its strategy to compete in the oscilloscope market. R&S also made note recently that in terms of carrier aggregation, all six test cases for its R&S TS8980 have been verified with various mobile devices and carried out in different frequency bands used for LTE in South Korea, the United States, Japan and Europe.
