Ixia Launches End-to-End Remote Quality of Experience and Service Validation Platform for Triple Play

Bell Canada Sees Total ROI in Just One Year
IPTV World Forum
Booth #144

Ixia (NASDAQ:XXIA), a leading global provider of IP performance test systems, today launched IxRave™, a patent-pending end-to-end remote Quality of Experience (QoE) and service validation platform. IxiRave enables carriers, service providers and enterprises to actively isolate faults, verify that end-customers are receiving services and that such services are working according to SLAs, and then continue to remotely monitor their networks. Bell Canada (NYSE:BCE) worked with Ixia to deploy remote testing capability for rolling out triple play services on its network and achieved payback in just one year. Ixia will demonstrate its new end-to-end remote quality of experience and service validation platform on stand number 144 at IPTV World Forum in London, March 12-14.

Bell Canada uses Ixia remote testing to drastically reduce truck rolls previously required to handle a high number of service incidents associated with the carrier’s DSL service. IxRave is based on the same remote test software and centralized test approach in use at Bell Canada. The carrier reduced IP-related unwarranted truck rolls by 98 percent, a savings to date of CAN$3.2 million. Bell Canada also recovered 86 percent of DSLAM ports previously tagged defective, a further savings of CAN$3.5 million.

“Voice and video services over the fixed broadband network are poised for rapid growth. We forecast global IPTV subscribers will increase from 12.1 million in 2007 to 60.2 million in 2012,” said Patrick Kelly, co-founder and senior analyst at OSS Observer. “Ixia provides active probe testing solutions at the edge and access demarcation points to verify service quality and effectively utilize the remote field workforce.”

IxRave is a cost-effective, scalable solution that integrates with carriers’ operation support systems (OSS) and provides active, rather than passive, service validation. Passive monitoring, long the mainstay of service monitoring, uses costly probes that only view the aggregate health of certain segments or network elements. IxRave’s inexpensive probes can be deployed along network edges, at customer premises and at key core points to perform real-time active network validation. According to a report from Infonetics, “passive monitoring cannot tell you the customer’s quality of experience. Service measurements, as opposed to general network measurements, are rising in importance.”

“As service providers roll out more real-time services and applications, the need for reliability and quality of service (QoS) will become more important,” according to a September 2006 Yankee Group study, Triple-Play Services Drive Demand for Integrated Network Testing Solutions. “Consequently, service providers such as Bell Canada are performing more testing in the production stage to maintain high thresholds of QoS and performance. Another challenge is minimizing the operational costs associated with truck rolls and long customer care calls.”

“Until now, end-to-end quality of experience and network service validation has been an unmet market need, but it’s one that Ixia is uniquely able to fill,” said Atul Bhatnagar, CEO and president of Ixia. “We’ve been able to leverage our expertise in IP network testing and our leading-edge products to create a solution that can immediately reduce carriers’ operating expenses and increase their revenues. We foresee continued innovation and growth in this market segment.”

Ixia can provide an ROI Analysis for carriers and service providers who would like to see how IxRave can help them reduce Operational Expenses for new IP Services through an ROI calculator.

About Ixia

Ixia is a leading provider of performance test systems for IP-based infrastructure and services. Ixia’s test systems are used by network and telephony equipment manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, service providers, governments and enterprises to validate the performance and reliability of complex IP networks, devices, and applications. Ixia’s triple play test systems address the growing need to test voice, video, and data services and network capability under real-world conditions.

For more information, contact Ixia at 26601 W. Agoura Road, Calabasas, CA 91302; 818-871-1800, Fax: 818-871-1805; Email: info {at} ixiacom(.)com or visit our Web Site at http://www.ixiacom.com.

Ixia, IxRave and the Ixia four-petal logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Ixia. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This material is for informational purposes only and subject to change without notice. It describes Ixia’s present plans to develop and make available to its customers certain products, features and capabilities. Ixia is only obligated to provide those deliverables specifically included in a written agreement between Ixia and the customer.

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