Electro Rent’s intellirent unit focused on testing solutions for the power, data center and renewable energy markets
Test equipment distributor Electro Rent is selling its intellirent business, which focuses on test equipment for power generation and distribution, data center and renewable energy, to private equity firm Sandbrook Capital.
Electro Rent has owned intellirent since 2018, and the sale means the company will be shedding a non-core business. Mike Clark, Electro Rent’s CEO, said that the segment “has grown significantly under our ownership and established itself as a leader in the power and electrical testing equipment rental market across a range of testing environments and industries.
He added: “The business is a non-core North American division that mostly operates independently and primarily serves different customers and end users than Electro Rent’s other business segments. It’s well-built to operate as a standalone enterprise led by a dedicated management team under the leadership of Neil McCaw.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2025.
Electro Rent is also owned by a private equity company, Platinum Equity. Platinum Equity Co-President Louis Samson and Platinum Equity Managing Director David Glatt said in a joint statement that they believe the sale “allows us to unlock the value of intellirent while Electro Rent focuses on further growth and investment in its core business.”
In other test news:
–Verizon touted a new uplink speed record in a test of 5G-Advanced that was conducted in partnership with Ericsson and Qualcomm. It involved using an Ericsson radio supporting two-carrier TDD carrier aggregation in C-Band spectrum, with two 100-megahertz channels aggregated and 2×2 MIMO in the uplink applied to each channel. The uplink speed reached 480 Mbps.
“Emerging applications, such as smart surveillance, industrial automation, augmented reality devices and generative AI models, require massive amounts of data to be continuously uploaded for analysis, decision-making, and model training,” said Srini Kalapala, SVP of technology and product development at Verizon. “Faster uplink speeds, in combination with the other advancements we’ve been introducing into our network, ensure that AI-driven systems can process real-time video feeds, sensor data, and user interactions without lag, improving responsiveness and accuracy. The work we are doing to drive uplink speeds is a key variable that will allow our customers to take advantage of these AI applications on our network.”
–Keysight Technologies reported its most recent quarterly results, which were mixed but above its guidance—and, the company said, in line with its expectations of seeing some recovery in demand this year.
“The demand environment remains consistent with our view of a gradual recovery in 2025,” said Satish Dhanasekaran, Keysight’s President and CEO, in a statement.
Keysight’s combined revenue was $1.3 billion, compared with $1.26 billion in the year-ago quarter. Net income was down slightly year-over-year, from $172 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $169 million in the first quarter of 2025.
In terms of business segments, Keysight reported that its Communications Solutions Group (CSG) has revenues of $883 million in the first quarter, up 5% year-over-year. That reflected both 5% growth commercial communications and 5% growth in aerospace, defense and government, the company said.
Meanwhile, Keysight’s Electronic Industrial Solutions Group (EISG) saw revenues drop 1% from the same time last year to $415 million for the quarter. Keysight said this reflected “mixed demand across end markets.”
The company expects to see second-quarter revenues for 2025 to be between $1.27 billion and $1.29 billion.
–DriveNets said this week that it achieved successful testing and deployment of its Network Cloud solution on peering and core nodes on Orange’s live international IP network. The proof-of-concept was put into place and began carrying “significant live traffic” in fewer than 45 days, according to DriveNets. The company said that the PoC “[demonstrates] the operational maturity of network disaggregation in a live production environment.” (On a related, check out the recent RCR Wireless News editorial webinar on testing AI infrastructure that features DriveNets.)
-Expect to see a lot of Open RAN demonstrations at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. O-RAN Alliance says there will be 33 showcases of O-RAN technology and solutions at the show, including highlights of the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) and component demos that “showcase significant improvements in interoperability and security,” the group said.
=Also related to ongoing Open RAN developments, Viavi Solutions said this week that it validated the first product against O-RAN and 3GPP test specifications with VALOR, the VIAVI Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN which has been federally funded as part of the U.S. government’s efforts to support an O-RAN ecosystem.
The product was Battelle‘s RavenStar Active Antenna System, and Viavi said that it went through Open Radio Unit (O-RU) testing, including uplink and downlink throughput plus O-RAN test cases around open fronthaul test cases. “RavenStar passed all tests, achieving 99% of theoretical uplink and downlink throughput, demonstrating high performance,” the test company noted in a release.
“VIAVI is pleased to be trusted by NTIA and Battelle to validate Open RAN readiness for deployment,” said Erik Probstfield, Viavi’s senior director for VALOR. “In addition to successfully validating performance of the RavenStar radio unit, we demonstrated the power of VALOR. The rapid progress from the launch of the lab to first test results has been driven by the unique efficiencies built into our architecture – for example, our ability to integrate with devices under test in just a few hours.”
–Teledyne LeCroy’s Austin Labs group has been designated as an official Bluetooth Qualification Test Facility.
–Rohde & Schwarz and module maker u-blox said that they have validated u-blox’s latest automotive GNSS module against the recently published Chinese GB/T test requirement for automotive on-board GNSS positioning systems using Rohde’s SMBV100B-based GNSS simulator solution. That solution will be among the technologies showcased at the R&S booth at MWC Barcelona.
What else is the test equipment company up to at MWC? For one, showing off the world’s first Voice over Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Network (NB-NTN) testbed that uses the CMW500 wideband radio communication tester; the testbed was developed with Murata to support a “push-to-talk like” use of NB-NTN. It will also have demonstrations of AI/ML-powered neural receiver testing in collaboration with NVIDIA, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radar target simulation (for automotive use) with NXP.
