5g Rollout: How Quality Engineering Helps Telecom Businesses Adapt to this New Phenomenon?

The 5G era is all set to disrupt the telecom industry. Moreover, with the convergence of IoT, Big Data, AI and other emerging?technologies, 5G will be a game-changer for Industry 4.0. By adopting 5G, businesses can leverage?benefits such as lower latency, increased bandwidth, higher capacity, greater flexibility and reduced costs.?

However, before adopting 5G, telecom companies must check and upgrade their existing technologies. Even post upgrade, businesses must?analyze the interoperability?of the entire system. To ensure the best outcome from all these processes, you need to invest in telecom testing.?

Just like every other industry, Quality Engineering (QE) has a vital role in the?telecom domain too. Here is how QE can help telecom companies with a successful 5G rollout.?

Customer satisfaction & retention?

Effective customer service delivery is the primary fulcrum for a business' success, and the telecom industry is no exception. Moreover, as new players enter the telecom market, competition intensifies. Every telecom business wants to capture its customer's attention through customized offerings and competitive pricing.?

However, merely capturing a customer's attention is only a half-job done. Providing efficient customer service goes way beyond offerings and pricing. It's a continuous process where the customer feels at home when transacting?with the business, whether on calls or messages.??

With the advent of 5G, businesses need to maintain uniformity in customer service delivery. It will help them not just in new customer acquisition but also in better customer retention. This is where QE comes into the picture. Quality engineers?evaluate both the backend and front-end systems to maintain seamless functioning across the entire business.??

While testing the backend systems helps businesses ensure that they have a robust architecture for high volumes of calls and messages, evaluating the front-end interface ensures responsiveness and usability of the applications and IVR systems.??

Moreover, by implementing innovative QE frameworks such as Agile and DevOps, QA teams enable businesses to optimize these testing processes and improve time-to-market for their telecom applications.?

Delivering a high-value outcome?

Operation Support System (OSS) and Business Support System (BSS) are two of the main pillars of the telecom industry. They help telecom companies meet their customer’s demands regarding network configuration management, fault management, network inventory and service provisioning. So, for the proper functioning of their businesses, telecom companies must maintain optimum operational efficiency for these systems.?

However, with the 5G rollout, Telecom companies need to upgrade these systems to make them compatible with the advanced 5G infrastructure. Moreover, there is already competition in the telecom market. So, your business needs to ensure that it is ahead in 5G adoption as compared to its peers.??

In this regard, QE frameworks can help your business in multiple ways. For example, QA teams can use these frameworks to validate and verify if the data migration from the legacy systems to the new ones is seamless and effective. They can also help companies drive digital transformation in their systems as they innovate.?

In addition, QA teams also test the integration of the new 5G infrastructure to ensure that it functions appropriately and adds value to the consumers' lives. Expert QA providers can also support effectively validating the operation after the 5G integration to deliver the desired output.?

Efficient billing management?

Billing management is one of the most critical issues for telecom companies because it is their primary revenue stream. However, with so many customizations and plans, they need to make sure that they are 100% correct in their billing operation, or else they might lose out on their profits or be fined for overbilling.?

There are many telecom operators who still use legacy billing systems. Most of these systems were developed keeping in mind the 2G and 3G when they did not offer diversified plans and the internet speed was low. However, with 5G coming into the picture, businesses are compelled to upgrade their systems to make them compatible with modern infrastructure.??

In addition, with the progression of the telecom sector, billing mechanisms have also evolved in the last few years. As a result, new payment methods have been introduced, making the billing procedure more complex. However, this does not mean that customers should face these complexities - the billing system must always be simple on the customer's end. Therefore, extra caution while upgrading the billing component.?

It is in this regard that QA teams play a significant role – quality checking every scenario to ensure utmost efficiency and accuracy during the billing process.?

Network security?

The advent of 5G in the telecom industry has accelerated its digital transformation journey, boosting its customer service delivery. As a result, telecom companies have onboarded many new subscribers while keeping existing customers on the platform.?

More customers mean more data and the need for increased safeguards for data and network security. Traditionally telecoms had taken adequate measures to thwart away cyber hackers. However, in today's day and age, even hackers have equipped themselves with new technologies. So, legacy systems need more than just penetration testing.?

With comprehensive cybersecurity testing, the role of QA teams is not limited to vulnerability scanning and simulating attacks. They also need to validate if the latest cybersecurity best practices are in place, whether adhering to the safe password policy or connecting to secure Wi-Fi.?

In addition, applying QE frameworks also help telecom companies take preventive measures for managing multiple accesses and data sharing. It also allows telecoms to restructure their IT infrastructure and maintain a robust security network throughout their system.?

Key takeaways?

The telecom industry has played a significant role in enabling high-speed communication worldwide. With the arrival of the 5G, these communication channels will only improve. So, telecom businesses would want to make the most of it and stay ahead in the competition.?

As already discussed above, adopting 5G also needs to go through multiple quality assurance processes. However, this is challenging for most companies because QA is not their strongest domain. So, these companies need to outsource their QA process to those firms that are well-equipped with all QE frameworks and methodologies.??

This is where Qualitest comes into the picture. It helps telecom companies leverage end-to-end Quality Engineering services while also delivering high-quality automated software testing services for their telecom applications.