Major UK Telecom Company saves 10 working weeks per year with Quali Test & Environment Automation

Telco increases productivity, speeds time to market, and accelerates delivery of software updates

PROBLEM

A major UK Telecom Company was burdened by extensive compliance and performance tests to ensure that necessary software updates were installed correctly and functioned properly.

To perform the routers’ radio signal testing, Lab Teams needed to physically move them individually, one degree per router and per radio signal. This represented 360 moves per router times four radio signals per router. As a result, a single radio signal test could require an entire day to complete.

The equipment was tested in an anechoic chamber, requiring team members to continually reposition the devices and retest them, a time-consuming, laborious manual task.

Each single test result had to be gathered and compiled manually to produce a final report, which increased the complexity and risk of human error.

SOLUTION

The Telecom organization consulted with Phoenix Datacom to enable 24/7 testing and automation of the entire process without the need for engineers to be on-site while accelerating the testing process and minimizing human error.

Phoenix Datacom’s solution combined Keysight’s Ixia Traffic Generation Platform to provide high-speed, real user traffic between Wi-Fi routers and endpoints, with Quali’s CloudShell lab automation software to automate and manage the entire test environment.

OUTCOMES

The new performance testing solution from Phoenix Datacom and Quali is helping the UK Telecom Company accelerate Wi-Fi router time-to-market through faster development and test cycles, an enhanced ability to provide software updates, and improved capabilities to identify and address technical customer issues more quickly.

Labs can now run continuously without the need for on-site engineers to re-cable the devices. As a result, the Company has reduced testing time from 12 weeks to 2 weeks. By automating manual tasks, they were also able to achieve a greater level of consistency.

The solution automatically extracts and manipulates the tests results to generate reports, freeing resources that can be redirected to other internal tasks, a dramatic productivity gain.

The UK Telecom Group is successfully using their integrated solution to automate its Test Lab infrastructure, speeding up Wi-Fi performance testing five-fold while dramatically increasing reliability.

As a result, the company’s test lab has been transformed from a cost center to an innovation enabler, fostering agility and business continuity while ensuring security and compliance.