Oct 26, 1998 12:00 PM,

HP widens hand-held testing Scope

Jason Meyers

Hewlett-Packard Co. continued to flesh out its line of service testing gear last week with the acquisition of Scope Communications, a developer of hand-held physical layer test sets.

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HP plans to integrate the company into its service test division, which was formed in July to develop a line of low-cost, small-format tools for installation and maintenance applications (Telephony, July 13, page 11). Scope manufactures equipment used by installers and technicians to test twisted pair and fiber plant for applications such as asynchronous transfer mode and gigabit Ethernet.

"We want to be capable of covering all the high-speed technologies, and their expertise and technology will augment what we already have," said Peter Shaw, marketing manager for HP's service test division.

Part of Scope's business has been focused on providing test tools for the technologies growing in popularity on the private network side, said Peter Williams, president of Scope. "There's a lot of activity on the enterprise standards scene with gigabit Ethernet, and we're addressing that," he said.

Being part of HP should help give Scope access to broader distribution channels, including international targets, Williams said.

One industry consultant said the acquisition is a particularly good fit because most low-cost, hand-held cable testers attempt to emulate HP's high-end systems test unit. "Everything these hand-held units are based on is the HP Network Analyzer," said Dennis Mazaris, president of PerfectSite, a cabling consulting company. "They've linked up with the company that makes the system everyone is trying to make their test sets act like."

HP's strategy in continuing to add products to its service test division could involve more acquisitions, because that is the fastest way to bring proven test gear and experienced people into the fold.

"The Scope team brings a lot of things it would have taken us a long time to get to in any other way," Shaw said. Future plans include forays into Sonet and DS-1 (1.54 Mb/s) testing, he said.