Exploding Femtocells: How Testing plays an important role

The Register pointed out a while back that some of Vodafone's Sure Signal Femtocells (designed by Alcatel-Lucent) are exploding.

Vodafone says that anxious customers of its home femtocell box are safe, despite experiencing continuing brownouts. Although Vodafone is replacing the Alcatel-made units on request, it has declined to carry out a full recall.

Vodafone's user forums have a lot of info and pictures. The one from which I took the above picture says:

The failure was announced by a loud bang, a flash and the tripping of the power circuit.

Luckily there has been no serious accidents but it is enough to highlight the importance of all the different kind of testing that is done for all different kinds of devices.

This picture above, even though highlights the testing for mobile devices, is not very different to the steps required or testing small cells.

Due to the pressures of delivering more is shorter duration's, it can sometimes be a challenge to finish all of these to the highest possible standards. In any case, if its not done in the right way, the end results are visible soon enough, once it goes live.