Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Quality Control in Telecommunications
For historical reasons, the telecommunications industry had soph-
isticated quality control back in the days of electromechanical
switches. When computers and software began to be used for tele-
communications, the industry was among the first to have formal
software quality assurance groups. It was also among the first to
use pretest inspections of requirements, design, and source code in
order to raise defect removal efficiency (DRE) up to the 99% range.
Telecommunications companies were also early adapters of
Tom McCabe's “cyclomatic complexity” metric from 1976 to ex-
amine code complexity. They also quickly adopted various code
coverage analytical tools to show testing effectiveness. Motorola
became famous for its Six Sigma quality program. Suffice it to
say the telecommunications industry is among the top industries in
software quality control.
In the modern world, quality remains a central focus of the
world's telecommunications companies, and security has been ad-
ded to the set of quality concerns. Huawei is a good example that
illustrates the technical and social impacts that computers and soft-
ware have had on major industries. Recall that in the early days
of telephones, routing calls from one subscriber to another took
place in central offices staffed by live telephone operators. Some
of these were so large that supervisors used roller skates to move
from operator to operator when there were troubles or requests that
needed special attention. Needless to say, these manual telephone
exchanges were highly labor intensive and costly.
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