US
: Tatara Systems announced the results of an end-user survey conducted
at 3GSM 2006. The survey of over one hundred mobile professionals
highlights a number of surprising results identifying key areas of
differentiation and new revenue opportunities for network operators.
The results will greatly
benefit forward-thinking mobile network operators searching for innovative
ways to package and sell mobile data services.
Key survey results revealed:
* A small percentage (9%
and 4% respectively) of cellular data subscribers surveyed relied
on UMTS or HSDPA for mobile data collection, with a massive 85% relying
on 2.5G technology in the form of GPRS for cellular mobile data
* Nearly 93% of respondents
use other networks beyond cellular mobile data with 43% citing the
need for higher performance, 30% stating coverage issues, and 20%
saying cellular mobile data was too expensive as the reasons for selecting
other networks for sessions.
* Basic messaging applications
remain by far the most popular: SMS (89%) and email (53%) with less
than a quarter of respondents (24%) currently browse the Internet
on the move. Mobile multimedia services are slow on the uptake: VoIP
18%, Video 13%, TV 6%
* Mobile and laptop users
that did not subscribe to a mobile data service either thought that
they didn’t need it (27%), or just believed existing services
were too expensive (12%)
* Overall just 57% of mobile
data users are satisfied with their current cellular mobile data connections
Responses to the survey
suggested that although there is undeniably a rapidly growing interest
and demand for sophisticated mobile data services to complement reliable
voice communications, there is an opportunity to differentiate and
improve the services experience for mobile data users.
Tatara Systems believes
there is an enormous market opportunity available for any mobile network
operators capable of delivering seamless, efficient, powerful, stable
and entertaining data applications to this growing community of early
adopting end users.
Paul Crann, vice president
of marketing for Tatara Systems said, “As operators continue
to see increasing competitive pressures, it is vital that they differentiate
by offering the best user experience possible to their customers.
Increasing customer satisfaction involves fulfilling customer expectations
with optimised performance and the ability to deliver a consistent
user experience across networks and devices. Delivering the best service
starts with allowing users to select the highest performance network
and/ or the least cost routing options.”
“Once you
step beyond coverage and speeds and feeds, operator success in this
lucrative converged mobile services market will be a function of who
can provide the best end-user experience,” said Steve Nicolle,
president and CEO of Tatara Systems.