Openreach and Viavi Solutions this week announced that they’re collaborating to automate testing the quality and speed of the Fusion, a virtual performance monitoring system.
This will be the first time that proactive network testing of end user speeds has been deployed in fibre access networks across the UK independent of the customer’s internet connection.
VIAVI Fusion incorporates both hardware and software, which will be used to rapidly isolate and troubleshoot faults on the network. Diagnostics will be automated for any issues as they’re raised by Openreach’s Communications Provider (CPs) customers.
In addition, customer service will be enhanced as contact center procedures will be automated, equipping operators with near real-time test results for rapid pass/fail interpretation. This allows further troubleshooting to be focused on the root cause, whether inside the Openreach network, or back with the CPs.
A key element of Fusion is its smart small form-factor pluggable (SFP) capability, enabling micro-probes plugged into thousands of nodes across the country. These probes enable automated throughput testing from all CPs ingress points to end-user premises, for millions of consumers. Now in its fourth generation of technology, VIAVI smart SFP technology supports 1G & 10G line rates across a variety of physical standards.
Trevor Linney, Network Technology Director at Openreach
As the country’s largest digital infrastructure provider, we recognise that service and broadband reliability has become more integral to everyday life especially when millions of people switched to working and schooling from home. Last year, we saw our broadband usage more than double with 50,000 Petabytes (PB) of data being consumed across the country.
Daniel Black, Director, UK & Nordics at VIAVI
Openreach plays such a foundational role in the UK’s digital economy that the improvements they make have a widespread, positive impact across the whole of the UK. The automation of testing across its network represents one such improvement. It will enable Openreach to be faster and more efficient with fault isolation, to the benefit of CPs, businesses and consumers.
