By Kelly Hill
Viavi Solutions is expanding its relationship with Italian wholesale fiber company Open Fiber, which has plans for a major fiber expansion and aims to provide “100 per cent ultra-broadband coverage with gigabit speeds for the whole of Italy,” according to a release.
Open Fiber says that it currently provides connectivity for 300 different national and international service providers, serving 14 million households in Italy. It plans to put 15 billion euros(US$15.8billion) of investment into expanding coverage such that it “effectively [ends] the digital divide between urban and rural areas within Italy” by the end of 2031. That funding includes a loan of 7.2 billion euros from Italian and international banks that the company says is the largest loan ever made in the region for telecom networks.
Open Fiber will use Viavi’s Optical Network Measurement System to help in managing network compliance and troubleshooting across construction, activation and monitoring of its fiber deployments. That test solution, as described by Viavi, including a centralized, high-resolutions test head which enables field techs to do remote commissioning and map topologies, while also automating acceptance and reporting of various fiber characteristics via a mobile app. As the network expands and each segment to the customer premise is tested, the solution also allows remote isolation and triage of network faults and failures.
“Open Fiber is charting an ambitious path to modernize the digital infrastructure for the whole of Italy,” said VP of EMEA at Viavi Solutions, Manuel Mato. “Our partnership enables Open Fiber to automate and accelerate their FTTH build without sacrificing quality while ensuring error-free first-time customer activation. Equally important, proactive in-life monitoring also allows Open Fiber to isolate network issues and shorten resolution and restoration times. We are proud of our role in helping Open Fiber realize a digital Italy.”
In other test news:
-For fans of the annual Eurovision Song Contest (which was won by Kalush Orchestra of Ukraine), a unique demonstration was held by the Rai Television and Radio Museum in Torino, Italy. Italian national broadcaster Rai teamed up with Rohde & Schwarz and Qualcomm in order to stream the Eurovision contest to test devices on-site at the museum using 5G Broadcast. The demo relied up on a 5G Broadcast solution from Rohde & Schwarz, which provides media broadcasting solutions in addition to test and measurement technologies.
“Eurovision is not only about what is happening on the stage but what is happening in the greenroom, in the audience, in the locations submitting votes and is the ideal vehicle to showcase 5G Broadcast’s capabilities. This exciting activation is another important step in the [research and] development of 5G Broadcast,” said VP of technical standards for Qualcomm Europe, Lorenzo Casaccia.
In other company news, Rohde & Schwarz said that its R&S TS-RRM-NR 5G conformance test system is the first to achieve test platform approval criteria, or TPAC, from the Global Certification Forum for 5G Radio Resource Management (RRM) at millimeter-wave frequencies.
–Keysight Technologies continues to see record growth, beating its own guidance with all-time best revenues and record orders in its fiscal second quarter ending April 30.
Keysight also this week announced that it is enabling start-up Celona in its work on private networks. Celona is using a few of Keysight’s 5G Radio Access Network test offerings, including its user equipment emulation solution and Keysight’s S9130A 5G Performance Multi-Band Vector Transceiver for speeding up validation of both sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave 5G base stations.
“Our enterprise customers expect high quality and performance of deployed critical wireless infrastructure,” said co-founder and CTO at Celona, Mehmet Yavuz. “Keysight’s test tools enable Celona to quickly verify the 5G radio operation and performance of Celona’s 5G LAN solutions, leading to significant reduction in time to market and improved performance.”
-ICYMI: The midband airwaves at 3.45-3.55 GHz were auctioned last year and aren’t quite available yet, but carriers are already testing to take stock of coverage characteristics for deployment planning. AT&T recently expanded its testing, and T-Mobile US got permission from the Federal Communications Commission this week to test up to 40 megahertz of the midband spectrum in and around specific locations in Dallas, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; New York City; and Seattle, Washington.
