Nokia Siemens Networks

Listen up: subscribers talk about their mobile service

Bad service quality can make users hang up, says a new German study.

In March of this year German magazine Connect asked readers of its In-Touch column to participate in a study that tracked mobile device usage and then asked detailed questions about service quality, coverage, and ease of operation.

The results combine data produced by the usage itself – call times, number of dropped calls, coverage issues, etc. – and participants’ responses to questionnaires.

The results hold some real implications for operators.

Details of the program

Connect asked all their readers to participate, those who accepted tended to be male, between 25 and 44 years old. Roughly half of them spent between 50 and 100 Euros per month on usage, while the rest were in equal numbers above and below this bracket. Operators included T-Mobile, O2, and Vodafone.

What makes the study unique is that it offers more information about the users’ perception of service quality than traditional methods. Participants all agreed to download Mobile Quality Analyzer (MQA) – a small program created by Nokia Siemens Networks which is able to request measurement data from internal interfaces. During the test period MQAs measured data including phone usage, active applications, camera usage, and quality of network services (e.g. the data rate of data connections or the duration of the connection establishment during voice calls). On top there are about 800 measurement parameters about the radio interface of the phone – from chosen radio standard through reception and transmission level to error indicators of connection drops.

Interesting results

Collating the results, organizers discovered some telling details with respect to the relationship between quality of service and usage.

With respect to web browsing:

• 15% of the sessions had accessibility or retainability problems

• For only 10% of the browsing sessions finding the content was ranked “difficult” or “impossible”

• 50% of the panelists used just 8 web links (90% 40 links) throughout the study period

• “Fast” connections reduce session time compared to those ranked “acceptable” or “slow”

For voice communications:

• Calls ranked “bad” by respondents were on average two minutes shorter than those ranked “fair”

• The speech quality of 4% of all calls was ranked “poor” or “bad”

• For 10% of the calls there was little or no coverage at the end of the call

Another interesting discovery was that participants sent text messages almost twice as often as calling.

Implications for operators

The In-Touch study shows that the better the service quality, the more often people will turn to a particular service. Even mobile internet users, who spend less time with faster connections, still access the net more often when the quality is sufficient.

Meaning, obviously, that people use more what they like more – and that the service quality does have an impact on operator revenues.

Said one consumer in a post-test questionnaire: “I also would like to participate in such studies for a longer period of time if the user is put in a position to proactively influence services and network quality – the winner always is the consumer. There cannot be better and more practical relevant testers than the end-users themselves.”