Though Apple users constitute a minority of mobile device users around the world, they’re a fairly predictable bunch when it comes to OS and firmware specifications. There are only about a handful of new Apple phones coming on the market in any given year, and users generally gravitate towards the

A few months ago, I decided to embrace a new challenge in my career with an up and coming technology company. I still remember when I was first familiarizing myself with the basics of test automation. In the beginning, I must admit I had the feeling that it was a very

Making the transition from manual to automated tests can be daunting—particularly in the telecom domain, where so much specialized knowledge is required for almost every aspect of a tester’s job. At SEGRON, we know first-hand that anyone who’s thinking about adopting a new testing framework is going to have a

Ever since Gartner named hyperautomation as one of its top technology trends for the coming year, there’s been a flood of discussion about what, exactly, hyperautomation might look like in practice. Will it mean robotic processes that learn automatically and increase their efficiency over time? Or maybe it will speed up root

Let’s state the obvious for a second: telecommunications networks produce a ton of data, especially when they’re being tested. For years, much of this data was of little value to telecom operators or testers—but with the emergence of Big Data (and related concepts like AI and machine learning), things are

One of the biggest concerns we hear from telco operators looking to automate their tests is the relative ease or difficulty of test case scripting. Telecoms aren’t typically staffed with a huge number of technically proficient developers, and a complex testcase scripting language would therefore make it difficult to leverage

Every year, Gartner gives a rundown of what it predicts will be the major strategic trends for companies to explore in the coming year, and 2019 was no different. The leading research and advisory firm has some lofty expectations for the year ahead—including practical blockchain applications, an increase in distributed

As of a few years ago, more than 90% of software testers reported that they were automating between 50 and 100% of their tests. Of the survey respondents who had automated, about a quarter saw ROI immediately, another quarter within 6 months, and another quarter within a year. Fewer than

Let’s say you’re migrating all of your subscribers to a highly redundant HSS database. You know it’s going to be a long process, but you want to set an ambitious deadline and perform the migration before your next quarterly all-hands meeting. As such, you put together a list of the

Let’s say you have a small system whose functionality you want to test, and you determine that there are five distinct use cases that require verification. As a technically-adept test engineer with a fair amount of programming skill, what do you do? In all likelihood, you simply script up each

End-to-end testing: for many telco operators it’s the holy grail of service verification, but it can also be a slow, laborious process that adversely impacts time to market. Even if you’ve managed to automate your relevant equipment and collect success and failure data from the relevant end-points. You might still

It’s no secret that test quality has a direct impact on quality of service, meaning that high quality tests can and do correlate with telco operators’ ability to attract and retain customers. And yet, as telecommunications networks become more and more complex, maintaining high quality tests for things like subscriber

The digitization of telecommunications has led to the adoption of many software testing methodologies, including end-to-end (E2E) testing. Sometimes confused with system testing, E2E testing goes much farther, validating the interoperability of different network components and their complex interactions.

At some point in their growth and development, most businesses regardless of industry eventually reach a point where they realize they can’t do it all themselves. Either they need help marketing their product, or some of their more tedious HR tasks could be outsourced, or their testing operations could be

When technology changes and evolves—as it does almost constantly—in the telecom domain, it typically takes standard-setting bodies like 3GPP six months to a year to establish a new set of test cases for conformance testers. Once those test cases come out, there’s a flurry of activity while operators, device manufacturers,

The modern cycle of updates for telecom networks continues to speed up, and telco operators need to do the same in order to keep pace with the market. For some of you, this may be leading you to consider test automation for verifying service on your network. Sure, there’s plenty

As increasing device fragmentation and the proliferation of different protocols continue to inflate the number of use cases that require testing, human testers are struggling to keep up. But, if you’re reading this, you probably know all that. More than that, you’re probably almost ready to take the plunge and

End-to-end testing—it’s all the rage right now in any number of industries, and with good reason. As global technologies become more connected and more thoroughly interwoven into the fabric of society, more thorough and efficient testing will become not just a luxury, but a necessity. As such, it should come

Okay, let’s say you’re one of the major telco operators in your geographic area, and in order to increase your competitiveness you’re hoping to be the first one to roll out a 5G network for mobile voice and data. You’ve spent months laying the groundwork and taking pains to get

A few years ago, a tester working on a typical telco project could run through about 10 use cases per day. Now, that number is closer to 8 use cases per day. This trend might be worrying from the outside, but if you’re a test engineer within the world of

In 2012, an Open Signal study found that there were about 4,000 different Android device models on the market. Within a couple of years, that number had risen to 12,000, and it’s likely only gone up since then. As a device tester, you already know that there’s considerable diversity among