Spotlight on Paragon Testing Services
Our history and origin
Paragon officially opened its doors late in 2016, but our team was formed the best part of a decade before this.
Between 2004 and 2009, all our current team members began their careers as software testing professionals at Sharp Telecommunications of Europe (STE). STE mainly acted as the European testing base for the Sharp Corporation’s mobile device division, but was also heavily involved in test management and execution for devices across Asia and both North and South America.
Ultimately, with Sharp’s focus moving heavily back to the Asian market, a European testing base was no longer feasible and the STE office was closed down in September of 2016.
But we were not willing to disband our team quite so easily and instead decided to seize the opportunity for a new beginning and form our own company, Paragon Testing Services, to use our experience to offer high quality software testing services to the larger mobile industry.
Our experience
Over the years our team has acted as an incredibly versatile unit, performing a huge range of tasks from live network testing including field trials, quality assurance, KPI and applications testing, through to conformance testing including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi certification, type approvals and regulatory testing.
We have gained vast amounts of hands-on experience testing feature phones, smartphones, tablets and modules. Testing on countless 2G, 3G and 4G networks, across 4 continents, under live conditions as well as in simulated lab environments.
Our services
Paragon’s main activities focus on the live network testing requirements for mobile devices. We see ourselves as the final line of defence before a product reaches its end user. It is one of the most crucial aspects of software testing and one that is often under-used in today’s society. A society where users seem to act as beta testers, with issues being resolved after a product launch. This is the trend we would like to end by providing high quality, detailed, user-style testing to ensure that your product is both fully functional and user-friendly before it makes it to market.
Our Testing as a Service (TaaS) model allows us to utilise our wealth of experience in test management, execution, reporting and certification into a complete solution that can be fully tailored to meet the demands of our customers and the end users.
Working alongside our partners we can not only perform our specialist live network field trials and quality assurance testing but can fully manage your project through all aspects of its testing cycle, from helping to define your initial testing requirements all the way through to the final certification steps.
Full details of our services can be found on our website
Our future
In an industry which changes as rapidly as telecommunications, it is essential that any successful company evolves at the same pace. At Paragon, we have big plans for future development and we are constantly working to increase our scope in a number of different ways.
ISO 17025 accreditation
Trust is a crucial aspect of any business relationship, but how can you trust a company that you have not yet worked with? That question is why we feel ISO 17025 accreditation is a key step in the development of Paragon as a company. This will give our new customers the peace of mind that our processes meet the high standards of the UK Accreditation Society (UKAS).
The ISO 17025 model is one we are very much used to working to and one which we will be using even before we receive our official accreditation, which we are expecting in the coming months.
GCF Membership/RTO Status
A huge part of our past experience has been related to the activities of the Global Certification Forum (GCF), and this is something that we’re keen to continue with at Paragon. GCFs “test once, use anywhere” philosophy can provide an excellent level of confidence that your device will function correctly wherever the user decides to take it. GCF certification is used by a growing number of operators as part of their acceptance testing and many manufacturers choose to perform GCF testing even when certification is not required.
We are expecting to become GCF members in the coming weeks and we will be able to run a GCF-style service for devices which do not require certification.
Acceptance to the Recognised Test Organisation (RTO) scheme will come shortly after our ISO 17025 accreditation and will allow us to perform official testing for GCF certification purposes.
[UPDATE] The GCF have approved our application and Paragon are now officially listed as a GCF observer member.
Test Automation
Automation of testing can certainly have both pros and cons but, when used correctly, the positives can vastly outweigh the negatives. We’re working hard to establish the correct balance of manual and automated testing and identify the best tools to use to meet our customers’ needs. We have various automation systems already in place, which can be used for Key Performance Indicator (KPI) testing and comparison/benchmarking tests, and this is an area we expect to grow even further in the near future.
Our presence (both online and offline)
We try our best to have a presence everywhere that we possibly can, if not in person then at least online.
Come and say hello at one of Cambridge Wireless’ many Special Interest Groups or various trade shows and industry events.
If you can’t find us in person you can always check out our online areas
Paragon Website
Linkedin Profile
Twitter Account
Facebook Page
CW Profile
Telecoms.com
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