Testers Drive Millions Of Miles To Benchmark Wireless Service

Dec 24, 2008 10:59 AM, MD&D Staff

Dead spots are still a problem for wireless service providers, and gathering critical performance data is important to eliminate these areas. That’s why experts from Global Wireless Services Inc. have now driven more than 3.5 million miles to test wireless networks for customers in over 2500 market drive tests throughout the U.S.

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During those test drives, GWS has placed tens of millions of calls and transmitted and received more than 15 million Mbytes of mobile data using specially equipped vans. Also during its road tests, the company measured dozens of attributes that are important to successful network operation. Among those are:

• Accessibility: the percentage of attempts that successfully initiated calls or connected to the wireless network
• Retainability: the percentage of successfully initiated calls or data sessions that are normally terminated by the customer rather than as the result of an operational issue
• Reliability: an end-to-end combination of accessibility and retainability
• Throughput: the mean rate of bytes transferred during the data sessions

Using a wide range of test equipment, handsets, and aircards, GWS collects the technical data needed to present benchmarking information to carriers, as well as offer detailed analysis and provide assistance in diagnosing network problems.

With benchmarking for both voice and data services, GWS delivers quality-of-service measurements, compares networks in a given market, and provides an engineering analysis to facilitate corrective action in areas of competitive weakness.