Telecommunications

Telecommunications now encompasses a very wide field, and can be broadly divided into radio techniques and fixed cable networks. Radio covers broadcasting from both ground and satellite stations, and fixed networks (based on electrical or optical cables) include telephone, data and Internet applications. However, many applications are blurring these boundaries by using a mixture of technologies (e.g. cellular phones).

High reliability is essential in all these applications to ensure customer satisfaction and to maximise profitability from the high capital investments required.

High value products (e.g. Base stations) justify the use of Stress Screening techniques during manufacture to screen out potential defects. In the case of low cost/high volume products (such as mobile phones) additional manufacturing processes are more difficult to justify (once the process is stable) but it is then more important to thoroughly test new and modified designs during the development stage.