The Telecom Industry is a top performing domain in the past few years. Testing business in the domain, needless to say, has picked up speed to a great extent because of the existing demands in the domain. Testers face unique challenges in the domain technologically. Given the high customer demand in the domain, testers have diversified their skill sets to the wide range of sectors in the same. Some of the sectors in the telecom industry include wireless communication, satellite communication, Internet service provider, etc.
It is important to understand the role telecom industry plays in determining the significance of telecom testing. Telecom industry builds, operates, and maintains telecommunication network and thereby makes communication possible globally through Internet or phone.
Telecom services are based on the following systems:
Business support systems: BSS basically deals with Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) and processes such as IVR’s call center, taking orders, generating invoices, processing bills, collecting payments, and more. In other words, customer-facing activities get involved in Business Support Systems.. The provider
Operations Support Systems: Unlike BSS, OSS supports back-office activities like telecom networking, provisioning, inventory, maintaining customer service, etc. Sometimes it is also called as Operational Support Systems.
Things to keep in mind
In the telecom industry, the provider takes the first step in reaching out to the customers with new service
Only if the customer feels that the service is good, will he generate an inquiry. Here, the customer is more interested is knowing about the service and the plan.
Once the customer is satisfied with the quote and is happy with the trial period, will he ask the TSP for his service.
Here comes the service provider’s role of confirming whether what he offers is meeting the expectations of the customer. The TSP also evaluates whether the service can be provided in the customer’s area or not. After the successful evaluation, the TSP starts working on the execution of the service request.
TSP always tracks the order status and if due to some reason the order implementation stops, the TSP ensures that the issue is resolved on priority and the customer continues to enjoy the services uninterrupted. In today’s world customer satisfaction holds the key to all business successes.
After successful implementation, client or customers start using the services and the billing cycle begins. Going further, if there are any technical issues, the quality assurance company will be available for support.
Types of telecom testing
There are different types of telecom testing, which are:
- Interconnection testing
- Conformance Testing
- IVR Testing
- Functional Testing
- Automation Testing
- Security Testing
- Interoperability Testing
- Protocol Testing
Testing Lifecycle in Telecom Industry
Here is how a typical telecom industry functions. These will be described in stages:
Business View: Feasibility-based artifacts, requirement-based test artifacts, standard and policy identification-based artifacts, operations and maintenance considerations-related test artifacts.
System/architecture: System test artifacts include security and installations, test artifacts for virtual prototype, special system testing artifacts (which includes interoperability disaster recovery).
The next step is that of implementation, which includes unit test artifacts, integration test artifacts, quality and performance artifacts, regression load testing, sanity, etc.
The last step is that of deployment, which includes acceptance test artifacts, integration test artifacts, quality and performance artifacts, and alpha/beta test artifacts.
Types of protocol used in Telecom Industry
Some of the popular protocols used in the Telecom Industry include:
Signalling and Protocol: SIP, ISDN, Codecs, H.323
Wireless Technologies: GPRS, CDMA, GSM, UMTS
Infrastructure/Security: ATM, TCP/IP, LAN/VLAN, SSH
VoIP Technologies: VoIP, IMS, MPLS, ISDN, PSTN
Layer 3 Protocols/ routing: ICMP, BGP, ISIS, MPLS
Network Management:SNMP
Layer 2 Protocols: ARP, STP, L2TP, PPP
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