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Test & Measurement: Ixia’s CEO resigns over false credentials

Ixia announced that Vic Alston resigned as its president and CEO after a company audit committee found that he had lied about his credentials. Alston had attended Stanford University as he claimed, but falsely stated that he had received a B.S. and M.S. in computer science, as well as misstating his age and early employment history.

Alston also resigned as a member of Ixia’s board of directors. The board appointed former CEO Errol Ginsberg, currently chief innovation officer, chairman of the board and founder of the company, to replace him as CEO. Alex Pepe, senior VP of strategy who came from recently acquired Anue Systems, was appointed COO.

“Vic made many positive contributions to Ixia over the past nine years, and we are saddened by the circumstances of his resignation,” said Ginsberg.

Ixia is now on the hunt for a new CEO. The company will report its earnings next week and expects revenue to be above the midpoint of its guidance of $112-$117 million. Still, Ixia’s stock took a hit on the news of Alston’s resignation. It had been trading above $16 per share before the news about Alston broke, and dropped down to the $14-per-share range before rebounding to about $15 in late morning trading today.

 

Texas Instruments reported revenues of $3.24 billion, down 4% year-over-year. Net income slid 20% to $629 million.

However, chairman, president and CEO Rich Templeton noted that the results reflect structural changes at the company and that when legacy wireless products are excluded, revenue was up 10% sequentially. The company is winding down its legacy wireless segment to focus on its analog business, where revenues grew 5% year-over-year, and embedded processing, where revenues gained a healthy 13% compared to the same period last year. The two businesses now account for more than 80% of TI’s revenues, according to Templeton, and legacy wireless was less than 2% of revenues.

 

Anritsu Company launched three frequency options for its battery-operated, portable PIM Master test analyzer, so that top-of-the-tower PIM measurements can be made accurately for deployments. The PIM Master MW82119A can now measure PIM in the LTE 800 MHz, LTE 2600 MHz, and UMTS 2100 MHz bands.

The new options “have been specifically developed to address the top bands planned for LTE network deployments, and can help ensure LTE networks do not suffer from lower data throughput caused by PIM interference,” according to Anritsu, and expand the vendor’s PIM Master MW82119A family to nine analyzers, with six other models that address major frequency ranges.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Kelly Hill
Kelly Hill
Kelly reports on network test and measurement, as well as the use of big data and analytics. She first covered the wireless industry for RCR Wireless News in 2005, focusing on carriers and mobile virtual network operators, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. Follow her on Twitter: @khillrcr