[3GScottishUser]

Exerpt from The Sunday Times (30/07/2006):

There was more bad news for 3G in a market-research report commissioned by Enders. This found that 63% of adults were not at all interested in 3G services, and a further 18% were not very interested.

Even those with a 3G phone showed little interest in the possibilities. Seven out of ten had either never made a video call, or had done so only once. More than half of 3G phone owners had never watched a video clip or downloaded music after an initial test. Three-quarters of consumers said they were unwilling to pay £5 a month to watch mobile TV.

The telephone study, conducted by BMRB, also makes grim reading for 3, the newest of the mobile networks and the only one dedicated to 3G. Only one third of 3’s existing customers plan to resubscribe with the network — less than half the loyalty displayed by its principal competitors.

O2 has the most loyal customers, with 81% planning to stay with it. Virgin Mobile also scored well, its 76% loyalty score putting it ahead of Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile. 3 said it did not consider the findings statistically significant because only a “very small” number of its customers were interviewed. It said the level of its customer “churn” was in line with its rivals.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2769-2291142,00.html

[Ben]

It said the level of its customer “churn” was in line with its rivals.
Wow, that's one all-out-lie right there!

O2's churn sounds pretty remarkable. At least someone is riding this storm of crazy cashback deals and poor retention strategies well.

[dgilbert2]

I for one have just cancelled three, 3 contracts and gone to O2.

Why? New deals on 3 are currently very poor with little incentives (eg cheque backs) like there were 12 months ago.

3 need to improve dealer commissions to get some good deals back again.

[3GScottishUser]

One has to bear in mind that over 50% of the market in the UK is PAYG and there has been tremendous improvemnets in terms of customer offerings both by established networks and newer MVNO's. Pre-Pay customers can call X/Net now for as little as 10p a minute and send texts for 5p (Tesco Extra).

In the contract arena much has also changed and your £1 buys a lot more incluive talk time than it used to. Innovations like stop the clock and Passport have also made quite a difference. Nowadays one can get just about any popular handset free and most folks can also get enough X/net and SMS included too for their needs. So there has to be a lot more emphisis on other factors like extras, TV, Video Content etc, and of course good customer service.

Over the last 30 months its been tortoise 02 that has been piling on the customers and improving customer retention. I consider they have achieved this (and doubled the value of the company) by giving cutsomers what they really want. 02 have basic services, bolt-ons, free loyalty bonuses, i-mode and 3G - all the bases have been covered in all of the market segments. I think when the history book is written on the introduction of 3G in the UK it'll be 02 and perhaps T-Mobile who made the most commercially prudent decisions as network operators.