Good coverage is top most reason for selecting a provider

BANGALORE, INDIA: Good coverage, above all other attractive schemes, has been established as the unequivocal reason for the subscribers' preference for a service provider of mobile telephony, according to a survey conducted by Opsbuds, the Bangalore based provider of Customer Experience Management and Market Research solutions for service providers.

From its recent survey, which adopted a three layered assessment of the minds of the mobile phone service users, Opsbuds found that bundle offers such as packaging handsets with free connection and widespread retail outlets are not a deciding factor for selecting a service provider by mobile phone users. On the contrary good coverage has been established as the singular top consideration across the circles.

Opsbuds’ survey coinciding soon after the introduction of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) system, however, revealed several other factors that went to bond service providers with the subscribers.

The top of mind reason for preferring a service provider is good network coverage for 80 percent of the respondents which is the basic expectation of the service. The unaided reason for as many as 37 percent is brand image. Interestingly only on being aided a reason as little as 23 percent indicated innovative tariff plans to choose a service provider. Even in the case of prepaid customers on being aided low denomination recharge (~15 percent) and full recharge (~13 percent) option featured as a reason. Therefore, there seems to be a consensus among subscribers that pricing is not a decision maker, wonder why the Telcos are at a price war hitting their ARPUs.

Opsbuds detailed telecom report provides reasons for customers selecting a specific service provider. The quantitative research used the simple random sampling method over a statistically representative sample size of 2,408 mobile users.

The survey was conducted across the four major telecom circles and the four metros in India, which include, Metros – (Bombay, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata), Circle A – (Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh , rest of Tamil Nadu, rest of Maharashtra, Goa), Circle B – (Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Haryana, rest of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh – West (UPW) Uttar Pradesh – East (UPE), Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim) and Circle C – (Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh).

The objective of the study was to enable the service providers in developing and implementing the market strategies in the current market scenario.

Another phenomenon that is contrary to popular perception is the delta in usage between Airtel and Vodafone seems to be significantly higher than otherwise perceived with Airtel (67 percent) and Vodafone (18 percent). Given that Opsbuds adopted the simple random method without introducing any quota bias; this could well be the case. Opsbuds will investigate this phenomenon in their next report.

The fact that, good coverage is the major reason across age, gender and circles will be a wakeup call for most of the service providers, who were under the impression that brand and good tariff plans alone will make them sail through the customers mind share. Also, an interesting finding was that IDEA/RCOM was among the top three performers in terms of brand image ahead of Tata, MTS and Uninor.

Speaking at the launch of the report, KK Cariapa, chief buddy, Opsbuds said: “We felt the need of bringing a comprehensive report on what the Indian consumers expect from the telecom service providers and some of the findings are very encouraging for the service providers. With the Indian customer evolving and becoming more tech savvy, the telecom providers need to address the market very differently.”