Viavi Solutions has officially opened its Viavi Automated Lab-as-a-Service, or VALOR, Open RAN testing facility in Chandler, Arizona.
VALOR is aimed at filling a need for pay-as-you-go, flexible, accessible and automated testing-as-a-service for Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) technologies; it was funded by a grant from the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. Its capabilities include interoperability, performance and security testing.
Viavi said that VALOR brings together its Nitro Wireless Open RAN Test Suite, the VAMOS (VIAVI Automation Management and Orchestration System) unified framework for hybrid physical and cloud lab testing, its TM500 and TeraVM test solutions for subsystem conformance, performance and interoperability testing. It also includes tech from other test companies, including a joint Open Radio Unit (O-RU) testbed with Rohde & Schwarz for assessing O-RU conformance and network energy saving, a large ETS-Lindgren anechoic chamber for performance testing for massive MIMO and OTA beamforming tests; and Open RAN-compliant O-CU, O-DU and O-RU reference technologies from vendors including Fujitsu, SOLiD and Capgemini.
Viavi said that VALOR will ultimately be able to support more than 500 test cases for O-RAN and 3GPP specifications.
“The grand opening of the VALOR lab is an important step in democratizing Open RAN testing for technology vendors by providing them with rapid access to comprehensive end-to-end solutions for everything from product development to performance stress tests”, said Viavi President and CEO Oleg Khaykin. “Supporting the services of existing industry test labs, VALOR closes existing test gaps and is set to play a key role in accelerating Open RAN adoption and encouraging new entrants to the Open RAN ecosystem.”
VALOR has already been established as the first authorized test lab for the Telecom Infra Project in order to smooth the way for broader industry implementation and certification of O-RAN-related tech—which is the main reason, after all, that VALOR received a $21.7 million grant from NTIA, as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to support the development of an Open RAN ecosystem. Based on feedback from industry stakeholders that was gathered through public comment and a listening session, NTIA’s initial focus for the innovation fund was on expanding and improving testing and R&D, with a particular focus on interoperability, performance and security of open networks as an urgently-needed foundation for Open RAN that could most efficiently boost the overall ecosystem.
“We know testing and evaluation is critical to Open RAN’s success and look forward to seeing the impact of these grants for years to come,” said Sarah Skaluba, who is special policy advisor for Telecom Policy and the Innovation Fund at NTIA.
In other test news:
-Neutral-host network infrastructure company Boldyn Networks is expanding its Las Vegas, Nevada-based Network Operations Center (NOC) to include a co-located innovation center and test lab facility.
Boldyn said that the annex to its NOC is planned for the spring of 2025 and will include multiple testing and lab spaces, a “next-generation innovation center, a client experiential area, and enhanced meeting and office spaces.” The center will showcase, among other things, private network solutions for business and government, as well as how the company is leveraging and enabling artificial intelligence, Boldyn said.
Christos Karmis, CEO of Boldyn Networks US, said: “We look forward to showcasing how we partner with our enterprise customers throughout all major industries, as well as our government and military customers, to solve their connectivity needs of today and tomorrow. By locating our innovation center in Las Vegas, it will allow our customers and partners to see firsthand how we deliver the latest wireless solutions and how we monitor and provide service quality assurance 24/7 to all our networks.”
“Adding the innovation center will not only showcase our NOC but also demonstrate our solutions in partnership with customers,” said Boldyn US CTO Marc Rohleder. “Our advanced lab environment will support continued technology innovation and testing to help advance customer solutions such as next gen wireless networks, private network low latency edge applications, computer vision technologies and advanced data analytics.”
–Keysight Technologies recently added two new analog signal generators to its portfolio: a radio frequency (RF) signal generator and a microwave analog signal generator. The company said that the new tools are compact, portable and fast, supporting component and device characterization in the frequency range up to 26 GHz.
-ICYMI: Ookla recently put out an interesting take on received broadband speeds, delving into its Speedtest data to look at the percentage of Speedtest users in any given U.S. state who experienced at least 100 Mbps downlink/20 Mbps uplink speeds—the Federal Communications Commission’s new minimum standard for broadband. Even the states with the highest percentages still had about 40% of Speedtest users who didn’t get the FCC minimum. Who were the top performers? Find out in this story.
–Teledyne LeCroy is launching what it says is the first integrated high-speed Ethernet traffic generation and protocol analysis solution, meant for validating the limits of Auto-Negotiation and Link Training (AN/LT) for 800 Gbps Ethernet. The company said that the test solution is an extension of its LinkExpert software that utilizes that Xena Z800 Freya Ethernet Traffic Generator and SierraNet M1288 Protocol Analyzer. Teledyne LeCroy added that the solution “not only validates optimal test scenarios but also addresses challenging corner cases, helping to resolve complex issues related to optimizing high-speed Ethernet connectivity before deployment in data centers.”
-A startup called Alpha Design AI is introducing generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) agents for semiconductor design and verification, claiming that the assistants can “drastically [accelerate] RTL code verification, debugging, and design optimization” and translate engineers’ design concepts into “precise design specifications” via simple language prompts. The company raised more than $3 million in a pre-seed funding round.
–Heights Telecom and Friendly Technologies have collaborated on CPE device management and quality-of-experience monitoring for broadband services, including monitoring related to Federal Communications Commission rules on speed and latency.
-Laurie E. Locascio, Ph.D., has been selected as the new president and CEO of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and will take office in January 2025. Locascio is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and will replace retiring ANSI President and CEO Joe Bhatia, who has been at the helm of the organization for nearly two decades.
-Also of note: As part of the Helene response and recovery, T-Mobile US and Starlink’s direct-to-cellular service—which is technically still in its beta testing phase—is being made available on a limited basis to some areas of North Carolina, in an attempt to bolster connectivity in places where a significant number of sites are still down. The two companies received special temporary authority from the Federal Communications Commission last weekend, in order to operate the NTN-based connectivity service.