As consumers worldwide have high expectations from their smartphones and tablets, mobile network operators need to enhance their product offering and minimize the possibility of launching poor quality devices.
In a new whitepaper entitled Even Better than the Real Thing, Anite argues that operators can gain competitive advantages by considering device testing and acceptance schemes based on solutions that simulate the device-network interoperability in the lab.
With mobile devices becoming more complex and with the media spotlight on the industry, testing has gained in significance. Lab testing is the proactive approach to assess devices in a controllable and repeatable way, which is also immune to statistical uncertainty.
Leading operators have gone beyond standard device conformance certification and opted for proprietary network simulation tests to check if a device will perform well in networks when launched. Such tests can help operators pre-empt situations that are likely to reoccur in the future, such as wrongly interpreting device issues as network problems.
“These tests can also identify problems associated with smartphone-induced signaling overload,” said Konstantinos Stavropoulos, IOT Product Manager, Anite.
Network simulator solutions provide the flexibility to consider a variety of test scenarios with full control. These scenarios include roaming without the expense of country or region-specific drive testing.
They also include ‘What if’ tests, which are difficult to run in live networks without affecting mobile users. With network simulators, test automation can be used and any captured or defined scenario can be replayed in the lab at any time to identify with confidence why the device performance may have changed.
The White Paper emphasizes the substantial commercial benefits of network simulation for operators. Due to automation and controllability, the OPEX and Total Cost of Ownership for testing devices in the lab are lower than with other approaches.
Network simulation helps establish objective and well-functioning acceptance schemes for operators to gain the competitive advantage through a number of factors. These include increased test efficiency, better device quality, reduced costs due to user-identified issues and faster time-to-market.
Network simulation has been pivotal to the success of operator-driven device acceptance programs. Compared with other approaches, it is a faster, more cost-effective and ultimately superior way to test mobile devices, which is why it is now also used to accelerate the introduction of LTE devices.
“Some people do not regard network simulation as the ‘real thing’. However, there are substantial benefits, described in this white paper, that make device testing in the lab even better than the real thing,” Stavropoulos added.
Konstantinos Stavropoulos, IOT Product Manager, Anite
editor@telecomlead.com
