This week’s test and measurement news
The test space is heating up in advance of Mobile World Congress being held next week in Barcelona, Spain.
• JDSU will be bidding farewell to its incarnation as JDU Uniphase, and the name, when it splits into two companies. Viavi Solutions will be the name of its network visibility-focused company, and the optical components and commercial laser company will be named Lumentum.
“We are creating two unique brands – both representing well-established expertise and market leadership – and positioning them with greater customer focus and agility,” said Tom Waechter, president and CEO of JDSU, who will be leading Viavi.
Along with naming its heirs, JDSU also said that CFO Rex Jackson has decided to depart the company and will exit after the separation and year-end filings are completed. The split is still on track to be completed by the third quarter of this year, despite objections from activist shareholder Sandell Asset Management, arguing the board should sell the Lumentum business unit instead of spinning it off.
Sandell issued a statement in response to initial filings for Lumentum, taking issue with the described set-up of the company’s governance, and protesting that it “does not intend to permit shareholders to take action by written consent, does not intend to permit shareholders to call special meetings, and intends to allow vacancies on Lumentum’s board of directors to be filled by the remaining directors (without affirming the shareholders’ right to do so).”
“The entire board of directors of JDSU bears full responsibility for the proposed governance of Lumentum,” Sandell said, adding that “we believe the entrenching mechanisms proposed at Lumentum clearly signify that the board has been disingenuous as regards to its purported willingness to enhance shareholder value and we intend to hold the entire Board accountable for these actions.”
• The integration of distributed antenna system provider Axell Wireless into Cobham’s wireless unit is progressing and expected to be completed by July, Cobham reported. Axell is being integrated into Cobham Wireless, which is also home to former test and measurement company Aeroflex, which Cobham acquired for $1.46 billion last year.
Cobham also announced this week that its TM500 network tester family now supports transmission and reception for Coordinated MultiPoint, which is part of LTE Release 11 and designed to reduce interference in small cells by improving cell-edge performance.
• Anite launched a “virtual drive testing” solution, which relies on data captured in real-world conditions to build tests that replay drive tests or indoor walk tests in the lab, emulating actual radio frequency conditions in a controlled environment and aimed at reducing overall test costs and time. The virtual field testing routes can be repeated for different use cases and allow users to either use real network infrastructure data or deploy a simulated network with the use of Anite’s 9000 network simulator.
Anite also recently added new features to its Nemo line of outdoor drive testing, handheld and in-building test tools that include forcing features for testing specific mobile network cells. The features, available with the Samsung Note 4, include band locking, GSM frequency locks, WCDMA carrier/scrambling code locks and PCI locks in LTE with the need to reboot.
• In related network monitoring news, traffic and network visibility companies Gigamon and Empirix just announced that they will be partnering Gigamon’s insights across networks and traffic with Empirix’s view of the customer experience and performance management in order to “transform volumes of data into real-time understanding of user experiences, which allows service providers to raise service levels and increase profitability.”
