US : Spirent Communications and Anite announced a partnership to speed the delivery of third generation (3G) wireless terminal test systems to the mobile industry.

Inset is Charles Simmons, President of Spirent’s Wireless business who is quoted below.

By combining their complimentary technologies in joint marketing and development activities, both companies will be able to increase their focus on core strengths while broadening their respective product portfolios.

The wireless industry is demanding more comprehensive 3G radio frequency (RF) and protocol conformance test systems to help meet forthcoming 2004 terminal certification deadlines and the requirements of network operators. Spirent brings to the partnership its UMTS Automatic Test System (U-ATS), a test system that addresses the RF test cases in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) terminal conformance specifications.

Anite will jointly market the U-ATS as part of its product portfolio, replacing the Anite U-RAMS 3G RF parametric test product. Anite will also play a role in the ongoing support and development of the U-ATS solution, helping to integrate Anite’s 2G SAT into the U-ATS to enable 3GPP Radio Resource Management (RRM) test case coverage, including such critical performance areas as handovers.
The agreement will also allow Anite to increase its development focus on the U-SAT protocol conformance test system, which provides broad coverage of the signaling test cases in the 3GPP terminal conformance specifications. Anite and Spirent have already been working closely together on development of a key element of the U-SAT solution, the CS100 WCDMA network emulation platform acquired by Spirent from UbiNetics in September 2002.

The two organizations also plan to cooperate on development of test solutions for high accuracy location technologies, in particular Assisted GPS (A-GPS), which are being deployed in 2G and 3G networks to enable location based services (LBS). Spirent will contribute its RF performance test and GPS simulation expertise and Anite its protocol test expertise.

Daniel Oosthuizen, Director of Anite’s Telecoms Division says: ‘We are delighted to be extending our relationship with Spirent and believe this significantly benefits our customers. We see the partnership with Spirent as a win-win situation with each of us bringing complementary expertise. By bringing our RF validation and GSM/GPRS expertise to development of the U-ATS, we and Spirent can deliver a more comprehensive solution to the market.‘

Charles Simmons, President of Spirent’s Wireless business, commenting on the partnership says: ‘Anite and Spirent already have a history of working together to accelerate the deployment of 3G terminals, and we are committed to further develop and strengthen this partnership in the long term to the benefit of our customers.