A dramatic acceleration is underway in mobile broadband data service adoption, driven by increasing smartphone market share, growth in the use of mobile applications, lower cost/higher cap mobile data plans, as well as the higher data rates possible in HSPA networks.

As devices and services shift rapidly from voice-centric to application-rich, complexity is exploding, even as time-to-market pressures continue to grow. This can lead to device implementation trade-offs that impact performance, especially in highly dynamic and adaptive HSPA networks. With data services growth comes an increasing recognition of the costs associated with poorly-performing mobile devices.

Device performance issues are not always caught by the industry-standard conformance testing required for certification. Conformance testing is not focused on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that impact the quality of subscriber experience, such as call drop rates, call setup failure rates, mobility scenarios between cells and between 2G and 3G networks and application-layer data throughput.

The Radio Access test area of the Spirent 8100 Mobile Device Test System provides a performance test environment to quantify and analyze these KPIs. This helps to achieve real savings for network operators and device manufacturers on costs associated with device returns, subscriber churn and network resource wastage. Spirent 8100 Radio Access test solutions address the voice and data call reliability, data throughput, mobility and inter-RAT performance of mobile devices under a wide range of real-world network conditions.