ARICENT UNVEILS INNOVATION ASSURANCE FOR MOBILE DEVICES

Leading Provider of Telecommunications Testing and Validation Services Expands Offerings for Communications Service Providers & Device Manufacturers

Palo Alto, Calif., May 26, 2009 - Aricent^TM, a global innovation, technology and services company focused exclusively on communications, today announced the addition of Innovation Assurance to the company's advanced testing services portfolio for Communications Service Providers and Device Manufacturers.  These expanded capabilities are aimed at enhancing new innovations and concepts in mobile devices and ensuring they can be efficiently commercialized given the increasing scale and complexity of the global communications ecosystem. 

Innovative user experiences are now table stakes for an increasingly sophisticated global mobile subscriber base.  To create a highly compelling, competitive user experience, Communications Service Providers and Device Manufactures must harmonize a highly complex set of technologies, including chipsets, user interfaces (visual, aural, touch), multimedia codecs, multiple operating systems (Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, LiMO), multiple radios, and more.  They must also ensure interoperability with the myriad of global wireless communications networks in place today.  This complexity, not understood well early in the go to market process, has prevented many innovative concepts from ever being realized.

"One of the most fundamental challenges faced by carriers and device makers today is efficiently commercializing innovative new mobile experiences given the growing technical complexity and scale of the global mobile networking ecosystem", said Dana Cooperson, Vice President, Network Infrastructure at Ovum. "We certainly expect significant demand for formalized services like this one from Aricent that are aimed at bridging the innovation to implementation gap in the mobile arena." 

In response to the growing need of Communications Service Providers and Device Manufacturers to quickly ensure innovative new solutions can be developed and commercialized efficiently - without meaningful reductions in initial design concepts - Aricent has expanded its industry leading testing and certification practice to include Innovation Assurance for Mobile Devices.  New capabilities include:

User Interface Audit. Aricent offers a detailed consultative review of user interface (UI) designs to ensure they harness the latest innovations and technologies, and align well with customers' business objectives.  These include for example simplifying content discovery to increase data usage, creating more value through customization and personalization, and ensuring a consistent and coherent branded experience.  Aricent has been recognized industry-wide for its UI work including contributions in developing state of the art mobile user environments such as CellTop and Sprint's One Click.

Device Optimization and Verification. A critical dependency of the ultimate user experience is the optimization of the device components, including network processors, power supplies, radios, viewing screens, multimedia codecs, operating systems and more.  Aricent offers assessment, testing and validation of the component integration which makes up the physical aspects of delivering a world class user experience, including an a review of the system (device + software) for key user experience characteristics such as audio and video performance, security, power consumption and more.

Mobile Ecosystem Interoperability Testing. Interoperability with the existing global mobile ecosystem is another critical commercialization factor to be considered.  Aricent provides a comprehensive suite of test cases, lab facilities and expert personnel to ensure smooth interoperation with mobile networks, including a broad range of actual and simulated mobile operating conditions.

Aricent's state-of-the-art live network labs, testing and network integration capabilities are well proven, with hundreds of successful projects worldwide. 

"Aricent brings a rare mix of innovation, design and deep mobile technology expertise that were essential to us when looking for a partner to help develop and validate our new user interface," said Kevin Packingham, Sprint senior vice president of Product and Technology Development.  "With One Click, we've delivered a market-changing solution that lets our customers personalize their experience and access the information and services that mean the most to them."

Aricent today provides a comprehensive portfolio of end -to-end testing services for infrastructure manufacturers, communications service providers, and device makers.

• Product Validation - Aricent's highly skilled consultants have completed hundreds of product validation projects, ensuring efficient, comprehensive feature / functionality, QA, performance and scale testing. Further, Aricent uniquely offers innovative verification techniques, to ensure that customers' concepts can be quickly commercialized;

• Interoperability - Aricent maintains hundreds of different devices and classes of products in our worldwide facilities, along with the multi-vendor operational expertise working with the world's leading equipment to ensure efficient, accurate IOT.  Our investment and expertise slashes the time, cost and complexity associated with broad interoperability testing;
• Managed Testing - Aricent's history of customer engagements, volume of test case execution, harnessing of global best practices, adherence to leading quality standards such as ISO90001, and CMMI Level 5, and investment in test frameworks have made Aricent the managed testing choice of many of the world's leading infrastructure manufacturers;
• Managed Certification - Aricent's deep understanding of complex international compliance and certification phases and processes coupled with completed projects in areas including CE, NEBS, UL and more make Managed Approval one of Aricent's most popular testing services;
• Network Integration - Ensuring integration success in today's production carrier networks, often starting with successful field / lab trials, is of utmost importance to equipment makers.  Leveraging Aricent's network integration services for this critical phase has become a common best practice among leading equipment vendors.

 "Getting compelling new mobile experiences to market quickly is a competitive imperative today, and requires a current, deep understanding of the not only the global telecom ecosystem, but also user behavior", said Sajal Gupta, Vice President of Business Development for Mobile Applications and Devices at Aricent.  Having helped design and commercialize some of the most innovative user experiences in recent history, Aricent is uniquely positioned to help our customers succeed.  We remain the only company offering a combination of in house innovation expertise in combination with world class communications engineering services"