Mobility

Mobile Testing and Monitoring – A New Paradigm

The deployment of 3G networks and popularity of mobile content has led to more users visiting web, downloading content and watching TV on their mobile phones. This augments the need for mobile providers to test the performance and continuously monitor the availability of their services and content.

Testing can a be classified as a function of Engineering and QA, that needs to solve one of the following questions-

·         Test the capabilities of every new device – Carriers are always introducing new devices which need to undergo compliance testing to support content types, picture size, Bluetooth capabilities, supported JAVA APIs, size, weight, etc. The collected data is then used for many different purposes; such as datasheets, recommendations to content providers and bug reports to manufacturers.

·         Validation of new devices against existing content – Whenever a new device is launched by the mobile carrier, the device capabilities and the development guidelines are sent to every content provider that needs to provide content on the new device. The content providers have a few days to "integrate" this new device to support their content. Once it is done, the mobile carrier checks that the content is compatible with the new device and displays correctly.

·         Validation of new services against existing devices – Every time there is a new mobile service/content, or every time a service/content significantly changes, the mobile carrier checks that the new service/content works with every device they distribute.

Monitoring on the other hand is more of an Operations function that needs to address the following issues-

·         Live Service monitoring – Mobile service providers need to check at a high frequency that every service is up and running for all their customers. This can be achieved by monitoring from different devices based on the content type and device technology - Basic phone, Smartphone, Big 3G phones, WAP phones, xHTML phones. Depending on the device type, end-users can get customized content generated by different servers; thus stressing the need to monitor from different mobile devices.

·         Content monitoring – Mobile content providers need to monitor all their content for broken links, missing pictures and syntax errors in pages.

Mobile testing and monitoring can help mobile providers to improve the overall end-user experience, thereby attracting more users and driving up adoption and revenue.

A Tale of Two Companies

A U.K mobile search engine company* recently announced that the U.S. has seen a dramatic increase in mobile Web usage – 3x over the previously tracked 12 months.

The growth in mobile usage is attributed to the flat-rate mobile data plans offered by major U.S. mobile carriers. And of course the novelty of texting that hit U.S.shores about 12 months ago.

Additional growth will come from mobile users who find compelling mobile applications (not much money to be made in the drive to offer unlimited SMS alone) and convenience.

2 companies – both using an MVNO model - focused on going after these twin drivers. Amp’d targeted new mobile apps, services and content while Pivot, a JV between cable operators and Sprint, focused on convenience by providing “quadruple-play” services (digital TV, high speed Internet, phone service, and now mobile service).

Amp’d filed for bankruptcy this week. Too early to tell how Pivot will do.

The preliminary intelligence on Amp’d indicates that they ran into collection problems. If their customers were primarily made up of the younger set, then financial wherewithal is the culprit, not necessarily the idea of a demographically-targeted mobile service provider. Nor has there been anything to indicate that poor service or quality was at issue (Amp’d leases access to Verizon’s network). Companies can emerge from bankruptcy so the final chapter hasn’t been written yet on this (to-date) $360 million venture.

Pivot is bringing together a lot of strength on the distribution side. The 3 cable companies that are part of this JV essentially have access to every U.S. household. Will the allure of 1-stop shopping convenience work in switching over customers who are already using another mobile service? The companies are hedging their bets and each one is pushing not just convenience but innovative mobile offerings such as “made-for-mobile” TV programming.  Now the question is how effectively are these services being delivered and will they be enough to cut down the industry's churn rate.

* www.bango.com