RF Vision

Factory standards to ensure accuracy

VIAVI Calibrates to TL9000 factory standards to ensure your instrument is certified to measure accurately, as it did when it came off the factory line.  Instruments that are out of calibration will produce unreliable measurements and can create false passing or false failing test results that often cause your team repeat work.  We maintain, polish and clean all fiber connectors, fix pigtail connections that are internal to the product to ensure all ports stay in good working order and upgrade software / firmware to the latest approved release to enable enhancements. VIAVI Care Plans are the most cost-effective way to plan for calibration with a low, discounted price at the time of instrument purchase, however fixed rate calibration can be purchased at a later date on a separate purchase order.

• Ensure accurate measurements that meet calibration and service level agreements, ISO and TL standards for network test procedures.
• Ensure all test transmission signals work properly to avoid issues such as not reaching full line rate testing rate required to validate service bandwidth, speed and quality of service (QoS).
• Maintain ports and connectors to keep test transmissions working properly and to extend the life of the instrument. For example, if optical connectors and, lasers are bad or electrical/RF interface ports are loose after years of connection cycles, OTDR, TDR, and Radio Frequency measurements will not work properly.
• When doing construction, installation and activation work that must be certified, all network components typically must be tested with a certified, calibrated instrument to preserve warranty from manufacturer, such as fiber optic cable manufactures. 
• Accurate RF frequencies and optical wavelengths are critical to meet measurement specifications.  If using these to validate network elements, power levels, transmission rates, out of specification tools will prevent validation of network elements and signals.

What are the most common implications of these issues to the business?

• Uncalibrated tools produce unreliable measurement results that can't be certified to specifications and may violate service level agreements or ISO/TL9000 standards with your customers and their network equipment vendors.
• QoS certification may be inaccurate and generate a repeat test need. Contractors are often not compensated or could be delisted as an approved service supplier due to incorrect results.
• Full manufacturer  warranty (20-30 years) from cable suppliers (e.g. Corning, CommScope, Belden, ect.) will only be granted if the installation is certified with a calibrated instrument, thus the network owner is motivated to comply with correct installation certification procedures to retain and enforce the warranty on expensive cabling and optical network elements, etc.

Common Business impacts include:

• Lost revenue, customer complaints and increased costs: 
• Most network operators track and audit repeat work done by sub-contractors and often there is a billing dispute in these cases.  Contractors with high rates of inaccurate test results are usually hired for less or not at all when not meeting SLA agreements or quality metrics.   
• For Network Operators, repeat service quality issues with customers often causes added cost, customer dissatisfaction and loss of business.  

Example:

Let's look at OTN/SONET/SDH/E1/T1 and various FTTX, DOCIS and xDSL measurements.  It is critical to reach full line rate (1G, 10G, 40G, 100G) to test service performance and service error rates.  If the uncalibrated tester can not reach full line rate during testing, a customer may be left with suboptimal performance that will quickly create complaints or alternatively, the technician could end up chasing phantom network problems that do not exist.