Project Background
Telecom Company works with its customers to plan, run and optimize their mobile networks to increase performance, customer satisfaction, market position and return on investment. Established during the fast growth of the mobile communications market in the nineties, Telecom Company has established itself as a competent, reliable and flexible key player in the market.
The main area of client’s cooperation with Stepwise is to create a tool measuring speed test connection.
Customer Benefits
Benefits for our client:
- Delivering top-notch network speed measuring tool, which can be embedded on any webpage
- A simple way to make any website more attractive
- A tool that can increase user traffic on the site
- Getting insight and analytics on the test results that users have performed
- Possibility to optimize network infrastructure
Benefits for the end customer:
- Measure your current internet speed
- Information on whether the ISP complies with the terms of the contract
- Information about potentially better internet service providers
- Possibility to optimize network infrastructure
- Additionally, if a user provides a data about his current internet offer details, then at the end of the test, he will get the actual benchmark listing:
– How much download speed does the user really get compared to the numbers promised by his internet provider
– How much other users get from the same service provider
– What are the top 3 internet providers in his country
The benchmark data is aggregated and calculated overnight, based on all the test results that are performed on a daily basis.
Main challenge
Main Stepwise challenge in this project was to create a proof of concept (PoC) and make sure that the tool we create is providing our partner with correct test results. That being said, we started with doing research around network routes, latency and network traffic and initial upload ramp-up speeds. It was also crucial to get rid of the outstanding test result values that would twist the end test result.
Another challenge was to quickly prepare UI design of the tool that would not only be consistent with the current client’s website, but also universal enough to be embedded on any other webpage.
Our approach
As in every project, we also started this one by agreeing with the client his expectations and current business needs. That’s why, from the very beginning, our main aim was to quickly deliver a working prototype of the tool.
Already during the first iteration (stage) of the project part of our team set off to work on the UI design, while the other part kicked off with the research and development of the network speed calculation tool. Thanks to this work schedule we significantly accelerated the pace of work.
After thorough research, we used the Google Cloud Platform (Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL) and Hetzner Cloud to create Virtual Machines in various locations and test the network speed results against our prototype hosted in those distant places.
We were, of course, well aware of the fact that the inner-workings of the cloud network routing is something on which we have almost no impact and that it might somehow impact the test results. On the other hand, it helped us to quickly prototype and make sure the calculation algorithm is correct by comparing the results to other solutions available on the market, when testing in the same location.
Final Outcome
The final outcome of the MVP product is a working tool available in 2 colour schemes (red and blue) and 2 modes (dark and light), which can be embedded on any page. Test results obtained with the use of the tool are credible, hence further work has been scheduled.
