Ahead of next week’s IWCE conference in Las Vegas, Anite and Bittium announced a collaboration around public safety drive testing capabilities. Bittium’s Band 14-capable, ruggedized ToughMobile smartphone has been integrated with Anite’s Nemo Outdoor drive testing solution, with an eye toward serving the market for public safety LTE networks emerging as the First Responders Network Authority continues to make steps toward building a nationwide network.
Bittium (formerly Elektrobit) makes one of the few available Band 14 handsets, and John Taylor, senior product manager with Anite, said Anite is the only test company to support the handset for drive testing. Tayler explained Anite views the young market for public safety LTE as a greenfield opportunity and a long-term business play, adding that as a test company looking at the public safety space, Anite is “a niche market serving yet another niche market,” but said demand is nonetheless there.
“We get questions about [Band 14 drive testing] all the time, so you have to have something to offer,” Taylor said.
Taylor said drive testing is a new concept for public safety, and Anite has been in contact with at least two of the major test beds for FirstNet (the organization has a number of early builder projects across the U.S.). Contracting for FirstNet projects thus far has largely been on a turn-key basis, Taylor noted, and the pilot networks are lightly loaded on a day-to-day basis – so optimization hasn’t been a significant concern yet.
“These guys are getting the network up and running, and they’re not truly optimizing it because they don’t need it – that will come later,” Taylor said. “Once they get there, we’re here to give them the initial tools.”
In other test news this week:
–IBWave is setting its sights on the Wi-Fi space by expanding its popular network planning tools to unlicensed spectrum. The company had announced its first Wi-Fi-only product in January in the form of a mobile app, and now is expanding the offering with a full network design solution called IBWave Wi-Fi, which integrates with the app. The solution includes 3D modeling, prediction calibration and a components database of all network equipment among its features, according to the company.
–EXFO signed an agreement for exclusive rights to resell PocketBERT’s bit-error-rate testers globally. The agreement focuses on two of PocketBERT’s offerings in particular; it’s compact 10G and 100G BER testers designed for use in lab and manufacturing environments.
–Keysight Technologies says its T4010S test platform has the most three component-carrier aggregation test cases for PTCRB certification as well as bands covered, and is supporting additional carrier-specific radio frequency tests for an unnamed U.S. carrier.
Sprint, meanwhile, announced it has achieved downlink speeds of more than 300 megabits per second using three-channel carrier aggregation on the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S7 in its Reston, Virginia, lab.
–Ixia is leveraging acquisitions as well as extensive partnerships in its newest cybersecurity-focused network visibility platform, dubbed Vision One. The company describes the solution as “the first full life-cycle security platform against cybercrime” and a “single platform for a granular view of network security.” Partners include Cisco, FireEye, Fortinet, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security, Intel Security, LogRhythm, Radware and Vectra.
Ixia said its partners can makes use of its Breaking Point Solution to test performance limits and the effectiveness of security in appliances and software; Breaking Point was acquired by the company in 2012. Partners can also use Ixia’s PerfectStorm One offering for large-scale application traffic generation. Glenn Chagnot, senior director of product management at Ixia, told Enterprise Networking Planet the company sees Vision One as “an integration of all the different technologies that Ixia has.”
-Canadian test company Averna acquired Belgium’s Test and Measurement Solutions for an undisclosed amount.
François Rainville, VP of sales and marketing for Averna, said in a statement the “major expansion into Europe signals Averna’s strategic positioning to accelerate growth and become a truly global test engineering powerhouse.” Rainville added the two companies share complementary solution portfolios, clients and partners, “so this is a real win-win arrangement for everyone.”
Test and Measurement Solutions is a National Instruments Gold Alliance Partner. The company has 100 employees, including 70 engineers with almost 50 NI certifications, Averna said, and T&M Solutions brings “unique expertise in semiconductor testing, vision inspection systems and precision assembly.”
The acquisition brings Averna to more than 425 employees, including more than 200 engineers with 125-plus NI certifications, according to Averna.
