Spirent Communications has landed a contract to support Canadian carrier Telus with with service assurance solutions to support quality of experience for the carrier’s triple-play customers.

The deal covers Spirent's SmartSight solution, which includes the SmartSight Central Operational System and IPMax probes to be deployed throughout the carrier’s network. SmartSight, deployed at the headend, allows emulation of service quality on the customer's line prior to installation, while IPMax probes are deployed in the DSLAM closer to the customer’s home.

“If there a set-top problem now, you can’t tell whether the problem is really in the home or on the network,” said Jeff Schmitz, vice president of product management for Spirent Communications. “IPMax can help you rule out where that problem is. You get better isolation and testing of the problem from the DSLAM.” Schmitz noted that while many IP DSLAMs allow physical facility testing and data collection, they don’t perform the service-level testing that could be at the core of the problem.