New mobile players better at satisfying customers

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 23 April 2006 17:35

IT Industry - Market

Newer entrants to Australia's mobile phone market are mounting a determined and increasingly successful attack against Telstra and Optus, according to Nielsen Media Research's Mobile Customer Monitor (MCM) for the December 2005 quarter.
The quarterly MCM report is based on Panorama Research Services' measurement of customer satisfaction and switching intentions of mobile phone customers. The findings indicate that Vodafone, Virgin Mobile and AAPT outscored Telstra and Optus in customer satisfaction in the December 2005 quarter.

The survey also showed that this group could be set to win a substantially larger share of customers who plan to switch networks in the next 12 months.

Vodafone improved its score for the third consecutive quarter to consolidate its place as customer satisfaction leader in the latest survey. The percentage of Vodafone customers who were very satisfied climbed to 46.3 percent, up slightly from 46.0 percent in the previous quarter and from 44.1 percent in the same quarter in 2004. Virgin Mobile, recently acquired by Optus, ranked second with 42.7 percent of customers very satisfied. It was the biggest improver in the latest survey, but this was not enough to restore Virgin Mobile to the leadership position it held for most of 2004. AAPT ranked third (37.9 percent) following a substantial improvement over the previous two quarters.

Telstra's customer satisfaction has remained static for the past two years, but its ranking has slipped as the performance of its competitors has steadily improved. Satisfaction with Hutchison's 3 Network declined by 1.3 percentage points in the latest survey, and is down by 12.3 points over the past four quarters.

"This has brought 3's ratings back to levels of mid-2004 and is a worrying development for the carrier at a time when its major competitors are aggressively entering the 3G market," AC Nielsen noted.

However, despite this, 3 remains one of the best acquirers of new customers. "This highlights the new business potential of a truly generational change in mobile network capability," according to AC Nielsen. "3 outperformed all other networks in prospective customer acquisition, relative to its current market size. It was being considered by almost 10 percent of all switchers, compared to its current market size of about three percent."

Other strong performers in customer acquisition were Virgin Mobile, Orange and AAPT.


ACCC rejects Hutchison mobile termination undertakings
The ACCC has released a draft decision rejection six access undertakings lodged last October by Hutchison for mobile terminating access to its 3G network, '3', and its 2G CDMA network, Orange.

The undertakings were lodged on 5 October 2005 and on 18 November the ACCC released a discussion paper relating to the undertakings, to which it received submissions from Telstra, Powertel, Vodafone and Hutchison itself.

The draft decision, discussion paper, submissions and the undertakings can be found on the ACCC's website, here.