The Challenge: Helping Latin American Operators Deliver Better Services Through Automated Testing
Latin Telecom is a private company based out of California that helps network operators in Latin America deliver better services. Whether it is for broadband Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), home or enterprise Wi-Fi, or web-applications, Latin Telecom understands the benefits of automated testing to produce the best customer experience for broadband subscribers.
“It’s our goal to help operators become proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to quality analysis and troubleshooting of software and CPE,” said Alexandre Martins, Chief Technology Officer at Latin Telecom. “Testing is difficult and time consuming without the right training and tools. Latin Telecom helps providers work with those tools and use our over 15 years of experience to help them build better products and applications through our professional services.”
Latin Telecom works with a number of testing tools to cover different aspects of operator CPE performance and functionality. However, while most solutions have plenty in the way of capabilities for test coverage, it is often up to the operator to know what to test, develop specific test cases, or define quality metrics on their own.
“Operators often don’t have the resources to build testing into their processes without doing a lot of development on their own,” said Alexandre. “They are in need of clear, concise tools with testing coverage for their CPE, and they need to be fully automated in a way that is easy to use and has clear benefits.”
The Solution: The CDRouter Test Solution Comprehensive Coverage for CPE
“We have always done testing on CPE performance, with traffic generation for routing functionality, latency, packet loss, etc.,” said Alexandre. “But there is a definite gap in other tools concerning clear pass/fail metrics on CPE features, applications, and protocols.”
In order to meet the needs of their operator customers, Latin Telecom sought out a solution that would cost effectively fill this gap.
“We initially found the CDRouter solution because of their TR-069 support,” said Alexandre. “CDRouter is the de-facto standard for TR-069 testing and has fantastic coverage in this area. But it really does so much more. There are literally thousands of test cases for CPE, covering DHCP, DNS, IPv4 and IPv6, and hundreds of other protocols and applications.”
“The absolute best thing is that the tests have clear pass/fail criteria,” said Alexandre. “I can understand them by looking at the documentation and test code, and make slight modifications when I need to. This is something we expect from test system vendors. QA Cafe is the only one who has done it.”
CDRouter automation reduces test cycles from days to seconds
“CDRouter is built for automation, and it is so easy,” said Alexandre. “We had one customer testing a particular case manually - after using CDRouter they went from doing three days of manual testing to eight seconds of automation. It was quite a relief!”
“Their API is also very clear and has excellent documentation,” said Alexandre. “This is something else that is lacking from many other tools. We are able to work it into our larger testing system that we develop for operators. The TR-069 testing capabilities of CDRouter also let us automatically configure the CPE using CWMP, so there are many testing scenarios where we do not have to interact with the CPE at all.
“On top of all of this, QA Cafe support is the best,” said Alexandre. “They take the time to help you, they have excellent documentation, and they understand the technology. They are a joy to work with. Overall, the entire experience - the tool, the tests, and the support - means our operators are getting more done in less time. And that means fewer issues for their subscribers.”
"WHAT TOOK THREE DAYS OF TESTING NOW TAKES ABOUT EIGHT SECONDS."
- Alexandre Martins, CTO at Latin Telecom
