As fourth-generation wireless technology has been rolled out, lessons learned during previous deployments have been invaluable.
Lou LaMedica, former director of Verizon Wireless’ device evaluation lab in New Jersey, told attendees at last week’s LTE Innovation Summit that customers are primarily concerned about performance, despite the industry emphasis on conformance testing. As Verizon Wireless rolled out new technologies, he said, it was important for the company to first benchmark the performance of its existing networks and then make sure that they used similar benchmarks to ensure that the new network performed at the same level or better.
“The part that people really get hung up on is performance,” LaMedica said. “They want high-quality, reliable devices and networks, they don’t want dropped called. It’s an experience they want to be able to say with some reliability, that it was good.”
Those expectations have become even higher over time, LaMedica added, noting that customers now expect to be able to get off an international flight, make a call, and not have any issues with either calls or applications. And the industry has made improvements in elements such as battery life as well as business processes, he said, crediting Steve Jobs and Apple for pushing forward an easier, smoother device activation scheme.
LaMedica said one of his most important accomplishments at Verizon Wireless was the establishment of a process approach that could be consistently applied to launching new technologies and devices.
Some of the major pieces of a successful process, he said, included:
- Requiring the testing for launch of new technology to stay within current allotted testing timeframes after initial launch. The first few iterations require more time, LaMedica conceded, but after 4-5 rounds of updates, a new technology should fit into the business’ typical testing cycle.
- Constantly reviewing test cases for those which are most relevant and efficient.
- Training employees in-house to be experts in the new technology launches. LaMedica emphasized that having vendors have all the expertise doesn’t leave the company with long-term value in handling problems. “It’s the key to sustainability,” he said. “If you don’t have qualified people, you can’t sustain this launch. … Training is key to this process.”
