In 2010, Verizon was sued for overbilling 15 million customers. They had charged over $90 million more than what they should have billed. On analyzing the issue, they realized that a software bug was responsible for this grave error. In a similar incident, Airtel has also had to pay fines and refunds to customers for overbilling.
We live in a connected world, and telecom has a major role to play in it. From voice calls & video calls to the Internet & connected devices, everything is possible with telecom connectivity. It allows devices to connect with or without wires. It plays a crucial role in people’s lives and businesses. Hence, it’s important to ensure that there are no outages, security risks, or billing issues that break the customer’s trust. To avoid any such issues, telecom companies must dedicate time and resources to strengthen their Quality Assurance and testing processes.
How Will QA & Testing Benefit Telecom Companies?
- Better customer experience
The success of the telecom industry depends on the efficiency of customer service delivery. With new players entering the industry and vying for the customers’ attention with competitive offers and attractive pricing, telecom operators must ensure that they deliver superior experiences to their customers. The QA and testing experts test the backend infrastructure and ensure that it is robust enough to endure heavy traffic of calls, messages, etc. They also check the frontend interface for user experience and responsiveness and the IVR systems to ensure that the customer’s problem is addressed quickly.
- Delivering quality outcome
The telecom industry relies on Business Support Systems (BSS) and Operation Support Systems (OSS) to meet all their business and customer demands. Hence, these systems must perform at their optimum level always. Due to the increasing competition from other players, telecom operators will have to upgrade or modernize their existing systems. The QA and testing team ensures seamless data migration from the legacy systems. They support the telecom operators with digital transformation as they take a step towards innovation. They also test the software and the system to ensure that it works effectively.
- Better bill management
As seen in the case of Verizon and Airtel, operators have been fined for overbilling. There have been instances of undercharging the customers too. Bill management is one of the common issues faced by telecom operators. Some operators are still using legacy bill management systems that don’t work well with the modern infrastructure, resulting in billing issues. With the telecom industry maturing, the billing system is getting complex as it requires integration across various applications and technology stacks. To keep pace with the complexity, operators are upgrading or modernizing their billing systems. Here, QA and testing play a crucial role in managing and maintaining the system properly by resolving bugs in the new system and ensuring accuracy in the billing.
- Network security
The telecom industry is at the cusp of digital transformation even as it struggles to maintain old communication protocols. With emerging technologies such as IoT and blockchain taking center stage and with a large volume of data being exchanged, telecom operators must be prepared for new network security threats. The QA teams have been proactive in testing the new assets for security vulnerabilities. They also take pre-emptive measures to prevent unauthorized access, ensure safe data exchange, and protect the network from larger attacks.
Types of Testing that Can Help Telecom Operators
- Performance testing
The QA team tests the telecom systems and software to evaluate their capacity to manage maximum traffic and load surges, measure their limitations, and meet the system performance requirements.
- Usability testing
Usability testing is done to check if the systems and software are user-centric and deliver a good experience to the end users.
- Security testing
The QA team digs deep into the network and the system using different technologies and tools to check if there are any unseen vulnerabilities or data breaches. They audit the systems to ensure that the security best practices are followed.
- QAOPS
QAOPS is a relatively new way of testing. QA is integrated with the CI/CD pipeline of DevOps. The QA team collaborates with the developers and the Ops team to ensure that the systems are continuously tested for bugs and security lapses. The objective is to develop secure and quality software.
- Test automation
Manual testing can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Given how critical it is for software to work flawlessly in the telecom industry at scale, the QA team must automate elements across the testing process to test the software continuously. This will enable the QA team to reduce lapses and create an efficient solution.
Conclusion
Software testing for telecom is complex and cannot be done with a poorly equipped team, especially when the operators have to upgrade the software or modernize equipment to address technology changes. It is also difficult to keep pace with the industry demands that change rapidly. That’s why telecom operators need a dedicated team of experts to do the QA testing of their systems.
That’s where Calsoft can help. At Calsoft, we offer end-to-end testing solutions using advanced processes and tools to help telecom operators maintain or enhance the quality of their solutions. We also help our customers integrate QA into their DevOps to ensure that the product quality is checked and fixed at every development stage. We offer our QA solutions to various industries, including telecom, to help operators go faster to market, accelerate innovation, and reduce the CAPEX and OPEX. To know more about our testing offerings, contact us.
