Virgin On Top; Orange Pipped

Virgin Mobile, appearing in the category for the first time, tops the pre-pay customer satisfaction tables in the J.D. Power and Associates 2004 UK Mobile Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study[SM]. Among contract (pay monthly) providers, Vodafone narrowly beats Orange for the top spot.

On pre-pay, Virgin scored 738 out of a maximum of 1,000, with very strong ratings for cost and customer service. On the contract side, Vodafone tops the table with 730 and Orange is close behind on 724. Vodafone rates highest on call quality / coverage and image, which the survey suggests are the two most important factors driving customer satisfaction.

Providers are focusing efforts on increasing the average revenue per user, especially for non-voice services such as Internet browsing, sending and receiving e-mails. Average monthly spending by pre-pay users has risen 14% from £21.33 in 2003 to £24.27 in 2004, and by pay-monthly (contract) customers by 16% from an average of £38.22 per month in 2003 to £44.18 per month now. Services such as photo messaging and sports and news information account for 8% of the latter.

'It pays for providers to encourage usage of more modern mobile phones and content since these owners spend significantly more per month than those who own less advanced phones', according to Gunda Lapski, Director of European Telecommunications and Utilities Services at J.D. Power. He also points out the growing use of mobiles to replace fixed lines: since 2002, customers using their mobile phone as their main method of telecommunication has risen from 20 to 29% in the pre-pay sector and from 43 to 53% in the contract sector.

Annual spending averages £291 for pre-pay customers and £530 for contract customers, but the number of customers planning to switch ('definitely/probably') over the next 12 months has risen from 10% in 2003 to 12% now in the pre-pay sector, and from 15 to 18% in the contract sector.

Eighteen per cent of customers now own a camera phone and another 26% are interested in owning one.

The study is now in its seventh year, and is based on 2,187 telephone interviews carried out in March 2004. J.D. Power and Associates is based in Westlake Village, California, with European headquarters in Guildford, UK. Its web site is at www.jdpower.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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