UK fixed line wholesaler Openreach is installing some new kit from Viavi that should enable everyone to see what kinds of speeds its network is serving up.

US-based Viavi is a major player in the testing and measurement space. It has a product called ‘Fusion’ (part of the even more incongruously-named ‘Nitro’ platform, apparently) that is designed to help with remote performance management. One of the things it claims to enable is and on-demand network speedometer, that reveals the speeds end-users are experiencing across whatever network it’s installed on.

Openreach, understandably, thinks this would be useful information for it to have at its disposal, and is plugging Fusion into its fibre network. This is apparently the first time proactive network testing of end user speeds has been deployed in fibre access networks across the UK independent of the customers internet connection.

“Openreach plays such a foundational role in the UK’s digital economy that the improvements they make have a widespread, positive impact across the whole of the UK,” said Daniel Black, Director, UK & Nordics at Viavi. “The automation of testing across its network represents one such improvement.

“It will enable Openreach to be faster and more efficient with fault isolation, to the benefit of CPs, businesses and consumers. And they’ll be able to reduce the number of truck rolls and site visits they perform, as they’ll have access to better intelligence remotely. We’re proud to play our part in this network evolution and we appreciate our positive, ongoing relationship with Openreach.”

The Openreach canned quote was such a quintessential piece of meaningless, self-promotional marketing-speech that we wouldn’t dream of inflicting it on you, dear reader. Suffice it to say, Openreach is great and this move will make it even greater. Viavi won some testing work from Openreach from Openreach a year ago, so we can infer from this latest win that it all turned out well.

If Openreach really wants to impress its customers and, ideally, end-users, it should make this real time performance data public. Sure, there may be times when the numbers aren’t so great, but what better way to demonstrate its ‘already strong service performance’, than a strong commitment to transparency? Similarly, if Openreach customers provided their own customers with an easy to access performance dashboard, that could provide a strong differentiator over their competitors.