The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab has expanded its Wi-Fi testing capabilities to include Broadband Forum testing that quantifies Wi-Fi access point performance.
The testing is in line with Broadband Forum’s WT-398 test plan for benchmarking consumer customer premise equipment, which UNH-IOL said “represents the first time industry has truly agreed to performance testing for WiFi systems and provides service providers with a tool set to compare and qualify equipment for their networks.”
“For service providers vested in differentiating their offerings based upon best-in-class performance, having the capability to perform testing plans to WT-398 is a critical first step in assuring wireless quality of service for customers,” said UNH-IOL Senior Engineer Lincoln Lavoie in a statement. “We have already established how wireless performance is impacted by faster technologies and an ever-increasing number of WiFi-connected devices. Now, for the first time, service providers will be able to request testing for WT-398 and receive detailed reports on where equipment stands in meeting industry-accepted performance metrics.”
In other test news this week:
–PCTel saw its revenues and profits drop in the most recent quarter, citing “deferred carrier capital budget deployment in North America” for the impacts.
Revenues were down 5% from the first quarter of 2017, to $21.7 million. Net loss was $858,000, compared to a net loss of $30,000 during the same time last year. The big impact in revenues came from the company’s radio frequency solutions unit, where revenues were down 30% year-over-year “due to the slow release of capital budget by several U.S. carriers,” as PCTel CEO David Neumann put it. PCTel saw 3% year-over-year growth in its connected solutions revenue, which was credited to growth in enterprise Wi-Fi.
–Wireless Telecom Group’s revenues boomed nearly 39% year-over-year to $13.3 million, due in large part to a boost from its recent acquisition of CommAgility, which develops embedded signal processing and RF modules. WTG said that its net revenues in its network solutions group were essentially flat, which test and measurement revenues were up almost 24% from the same period last year. The big jump came from its embedded solutions segment, with revenues up 300% due to the acquisition. Net income was $374,000 for the most recent quarter, compared to a net loss of $1.2 million in the year-ago period.
–National Instruments launched a new platform for large-scale management and automation of test systems. SystemLink software provides a “centralized interface for automating tasks such as software deployment, remote device configuration and system health performance monitoring,” according to NI, which said that companies are looking for new ways to manage their test systems — ones that scale across distributed locations and provide insightful data while reducing administration time.
–Tektronix said that it recently hit the milestone of selling 1 million of its entry-level, “value” oscilloscopes.
