Germany’s Dekra will undergo a major reorganization in January, shifting from its current three business units (automotive, industrial and personnel) to integrating its services across eight segments. The testing, inspection and certification company plans to work with Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica for network support to test connected and autonomous driving in Europe and Asia — including adding 5G to a European test track.
Dekra said that it will offer a future test area with 5G capabilities for vehicle manufacturers at its Lausitzring race track in Klettwitz, Germany, with connectivity provided by DT; Dekra purchased that track, as well as one in Spain, last year, to expand its automotive testing-related services. Dekra noted that the lab at its technology center at Lausitzring in Klettwitz is in the midst of an eight-figure expansion.
In a retrospective looking back on the company’s 2018, Dekra said that it expects consolidated revenue to grow 5.5% to more than 3.3 billion Euros, with around 40% coming from outside Germany; about 1.6 billion Euros of that comes from its automotive-related testing and services. Dekra expects its headcount to end 2018 at more than 46,000, having grown by more than 2,000 during the year; the company said that 2018 has been its 15th straight year of growth and that it has “cemented its standing as the world’s fourth largest company in the [testing, inspection and certification] industry.”
“This next stage of development allows us to make the most of the Dekra Group’s strengths. We are combining our expertise on a global scale with a view to the new opportunities offered by digitalization, strengthening our customer focus,” said company CEO Stefan Kölbl in a statement to journalists in Stuttgart. “After 15 years of uninterrupted growth, this new basic setup allows us to maintain our commitment to safety across the world in the future, and to continue to achieve sustainable growth.”
In other test news:
-As South Korean carriers officially launched 5G services this month, test company Accuver said that it provided one of them with a commercial version of its 5G New Radio field testing solution. The company also noted that it previously provided a radio optimization tool for the pre-commercial 5G network deployed by KT at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics.
Accuver said it was also the first vendor to provide a U.S. tier one carrier with a 5G field-testing offering, in March of this year.
–Keysight Technologies is focused on 5G device development, with new this week that it has received PTCRB validation for 5G New Radio device certification, via its 5G Conformance Tool Set. The test company also reported that Chinese mobile device manufacturer Oppo will use its 5G NR network emulation offerings to validate sub-6 GHz protocol and radio frequency performance. Oppo is aiming for commercial release of its first 5G mobile device in 2019, Keysight noted, and the OEM has already used Keysight’s UXM-based network emulation tools to demonstrate a 5G video call.
–Spirent Communications said this week that Aston Martin Racing is using its iTest test-as-a-service platform to support the racing group’s wireless local area network testing and set-up needs at race venues. Spirent is a technical partner for AMR.
“We travel to races all over the world and until recently, every time we set up the pit garage, we had to manually check the LAN’s viability and performance – a task that was taking up a lot of time and resources,” said Alistair Grimshaw, ARM senior analysis engineer, in a statement. “It’s much easier with iTest, all we have to do is click a button and wait a few minutes for the report.”
–Ruckus Networks said that its T811-CM series and E510 outdoor access points this week were the first to receive Wi-Fi Alliance’s Vantage Release 2 certification. The Vantage Release 2 certification focuses on increased performance and efficiency in dense Wi-Fi environments, through a combination of leveraging 802.11ac, Passpoint for automated authentication, optimized connectivity and the use of Wi-Fi multiband (more on those features here, from Wi-Fi Alliance). Ruckus noted that it has been collaborating with WFA on the optimized connectivity and agile multiband pieces, where it was “involved with the original specification and testing, conformance events, and helped spearhead efforts to get the standard finalized and released.”
–NetScout said this week that Brazilian bank Banco Votorantim, one of Brazil’s largest banks, has deployed NetScout’s nGenius service assurance platform and its Arbor distributed denial of service cybersecurity solution.
-Ted Rappaport, a New York University professor and founding director of the university’s NYU Wireless research program, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
-ICYMI: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency held the second preliminary event of its three-year Spectrum Collaboration Challenge this week, leveraging its one-of-a-kind Colosseum emulation test bed. Read the full story here.
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