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 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Aricent(TM), a global innovation,
technology and services company focused exclusively on communications, today
announced the addition of Innovation Assurance(TM) 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
Manufacturers 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 services, given the
growing technical complexity and scale of the telecoms ecosystem," said Dana
Cooperson, Vice President, Network Infrastructure at Ovum. "We certainly
expect additional formalized services like this one to emerge that are aimed
at bridging the innovation to implementation gap."

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, see: Aricent Announces Worldwide Rollout of
CellTop and Aricent Delivers 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 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 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 testing (IOT) - Aricent operates and maintains
hundreds
of different devices and classes of products in our worldwide
facilities. Our investment and expertise slashes the time, cost and
complexity associated with broad, thorough ecosystem 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 Certification 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 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."

For access to Ovum's latest report on the future of telecom testing, or for
more information on Aricent or its Communications Infrastructure Testing &
Network Integration practice, please go to http://www.aricent.com/testing.

About Aricent
Aricent is a global innovation, technology and services company focused
exclusively on communications. Aricent combines the leading innovation
capabilities of frog design with unparalleled domain expertise in
communications as a strategic supplier to the world's foremost infrastructure,
application and service providers. The company's investors include Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts & Co., Sequoia Capital, The Family Office and Flextronics
International Ltd. For more information, visit http://www.aricent.com.

Keywords & tags: Wireless Testing, Wire-line Testing communications, Aricent,
KKR, Test Labs, 3G Testing, 2G/2.5G Testing, IOT, Certification, Validation,
Network Integration, End-to-End Testing

Aricent is a trademark of Aricent Inc., in the United States and other
jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.

SOURCE Aricent

Steve Manuel, Sr. Director of Corporate Marketing of Aricent, +1-650-391-1621,
steve.manuel@aricent.com; or Americas, Chris Lalli of Cohn & Wolfe,
+1-415-365-8540, chris.lalli@cohnwolfe.com; or Europe, Paula Muezerie of
AxiCom, +44 208 392 4081, aricent@axicom.com; or India, Shikha Singh Sehrawat
of Text 100, +91 981 175 7369, shikhas@text100.co.in, all for Aricent