Posted on January 14th, 2010 in
uTest by Jennifer Moebius
Bug-iversary Alert! Tomorrow is the 20-year anniversary of the “crash” of the AT&T Long Distance Network. On January 15, 1990 faulty software was installed on the AT&T Electronic Switching System (Number 4 ESS): a one-line bug incapacitated the entire system, disabling switches throughout half the network.
Known as one of the most serious telecom bugs in history, more than 75 million calls were not connected during 9 hours, an estimated $60 million loss.
Dennis Burke of California Polytechnic said it best: “The Jan. 1990 incident showed how bugs in self-healing software can bring down healthy systems, and the difficulty of detecting obscure load- and time-dependent defects in software.”
Speaking of “load defects,” AT&T — after signing up to be exclusive U.S. provider of iPhone service — has recently come under fire for the quality of its network coverage. Businessweek‘s top headlines read:
In light of this bug-iversary, I can’t help but wonder if more testing should have been done before AT&T took on the massive data demands of modern 3G smartphones? What do you think?
Posted on November 4th, 2009 in
Software Testing Trends,
Testing - Mobile Apps by Stanton Champion
Mobile bugs are becoming a bigger and bigger problem, and iPhone users are the latest to be affected by buggy software. Techcrunch reported yesterday that a bug in Safari causes it to consume bandwidth even when it’s closed. The problem arises with the use of Motion JPEG (or M-JPEG), a video standard that is built off of the JPEG images standard. When an iPhone user visits a page with an M-JPEG video, Safari will download continuously, even if the user pushes the Home button to end Safari and go back to the home screen.
What makes this problem really terrible is that many mobile users are charged for their bandwidth usage. Even AT&T users, who are used to having unlimited data plans in the United States, can be charged for data consumption while traveling internationally. That can mean big bills when they get back home.
Cellular service providers aren’t immune either. Networks around the world are struggling to keep up with the data demands of the iPhone, and providers certainly don’t need to deal with unnecessary data consumption caused by broken software. That means companies like AT&T are building out extra infrastructure to support buggy apps – something that costs you and me money in our phone bills.
For the security researchers who uncovered this bug, one hour of testing resulted in $3,000 worth of data charges. That is serious money, and anyone developing mobile apps should take heed. Your broken app can cost enough money to buy 10 iPhones, and that’s a great way to get some bad press. Further proof that mobile application testing needs to catch-up to the standards of web and desktop testing.
