Conformance and interoperability testing

With well over a billion and a half subscribers connected to global system for mobile (GSM) networks alone and many millions of phones being produced each year, testing is a major element in the production of a mobile-phone design. It is particularly important for operators to ensure that phones work correctly. If they do not operate correctly, it is likely that users will change their network as well as the phone, not knowing where the problem lies. With the enormous levels of competition between the variety of network operators and also between the different phone manufacturers, none can afford poor levels of performance. Adequate testing in the development stages can save considerable amounts of money later—far outweighing the cost of any test equipment purchased. So to avoid user inconvenience, an approach different from that used by universal mobile telecommunications system/global system for mobile (GSM/UMTS) has been adopted by the CDMA-based systems. The emphasis of testing is on interoperability with the network, rather than conformance with a specification. This has the advantage that it checks that the phone actually works on the network.