Keysight Technologies had a record quarter, turning in its all-time highest quarterly revenue and record orders.
Revenues were at $1.25 billion for the quarter, up 23% year-over-year; orders were similarly up 23% from the same time last year and reached $1.31 billion. Profits grew as well, from $176 million during the third quarter of 2020 to $254 million.
“The durability of our business model was again on full display this quarter,” said Ron Nersesian, Keysight’s chairman, president and CEO, adding that the company’s software-centric solutions strategy “continues to yield consistently strong results.”
The test company this week also launched its new Keysight Nemo 5G RAN Analytics software, which it describes as a “fully automated cloud-based solution for streamlining data processing” in addition to reporting and analytics to accelerate analysis of the 5G RAN. It also connects with Keysight’s other Nemo portfolio of solutions, including its Nemo drve testing, remote monitoring, Nemo Handy handheld measurement software and its backpack-based test offering as well as its Nemo network benchmarking solution.
“Worldwide intensification of multi-vendor 5G deployments is leading to the need for synchronized data management tools that simplifies access to interactive views and accelerates the uploading, processing, analysis and reporting of large volumes of data,” said Petri Toljamo, VP and GM for Nemo wireless network solutions at Keysight. “By improving the efficiency in the data analytics workflow, Nemo 5G RAN Analytics supports smooth roll-outs of a wide range of 5G services in diverse network typologies.”
Also, Keysight’s Keysight World for the Americas is coming up October 12-14. More information about the event can be found here.
In other test news:
-A few interesting experimental licenses were granted by the Federal Communications Commission recently. Dish Wireless was approved for a Special Temporary Authority (STA) to field test 5G in Las Vegas, Nevada at 1.695-1.710 GHz, 1.755-1.760 GHz and 2.155-2.160 GHz as it preps for its long-awaited beta launch. The STA runs from August 23 to February 23, 2022 and covers the use of 29 base stations (manufacturer and model unspecified) and 200 mobile devices at one location in Vegas, which appears to be an industrial space.
DISH has previously indicated that its first 5G market will be Las Vegas, and EVP Network Deployment Dave Mayo said has said that construction in Las Vegas will be “substantially complete” in the next two months, with beta-testing of customers coming in the fourth quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, Sigfox USA was granted a six-month STA to experiment with two types of IoT devices operating at 902-906 MHz, 920-924 MHz (Earth-to-space) and 400 MHz (space-to-Earth) in two locations in Massachusetts. Sigfox said that it plans to work on proof-of-concept demonstrations that transmissions from these IoT devices can be received by technology validation payloads on certain satellites, with an eye toward terrestrial IoT devices that . could be used with both terrestrial networks and communicate with satellites.
“The experimental operations proposed … will constitute a critical experimental milestone to extending and enhancing existing terrestrial IoT networks,” Sigfox USA said in its filing.
And finally, Verizon continues its testing efforts to prepare for the turn-up of C-Band spectrum later this year and the devices which will operate in that spectrum. The carrier recently made a nearly nationwide STA request to the FCC to use a small slice of C-Band spectrum to tune its deployment models. This week, it was granted an additional STA to use 100 megahertz of the band from 3.7-3.8 GHz (in the A block, which will be the first available spectrum cleared) to “co-develop different mobile devices with OEM partners” in San Francisco, California.
Verizon’s experimental license will last nine months, with testing both indoors and outdoors at several locations in Cupertino and Santa Cruz. Verizon said it plans to use 14 test transmitters and 30 test devices from multiple manufacturers.
–Cambium Networks has become a founding member of the system integrator Future Technologies Venture‘s new Innovation Center in Atlanta, Georgia, an industrial lab with the capability for testing Wi-Fi 6, CBRS, Terragraph (60 GHz) and 4G/5G cellular. The facility includes connectivity to the edge, a local datacenter, internet and cloud technologies with network monitoring, and simulation tools for testing bandwidth, latency, and interference, according to Future Technologies Venture.
-Speaking of Terragraph, Signals Research Group recently got to test a Terragraph mesh network that Facebook put up at its Menlo Park campus. Read that full story here.
–ETSI is holding a virtual event focused on test automation in late October. The organization’s 8th User Conference on Advanced Automated Testing (UCAAT) will be held October 19-21; more information available here.
