Good Coverage above all other attractive schemes has been established as the unequivocal reason for the subscribers’ preference for a service provider of mobile telephony, according to a survey conducted by Opsbuds.

From its recent survey, which adopted a three layered assessment of the minds of the mobile phone service users, Opsbuds found that bundle offers such as packaging handsets with free connection and widespread retail outlets are not a deciding factor for selecting a service provider by mobile phone users.

The survey was conducted across the 4 major telecom circles and the 4 metros in India , which include, Metros,Circle A,Circle B and Circle C.The top of mind reason for preferring a service provider is good network coverage for 80% of the respondents which is the basic expectation of the service.

The unaided reason for as many as 37% is brand image. Interestingly only on being aided a reason as little as 23% indicated innovative tariff plans to choose a service provider. Even in the case of prepaid customers on being aided low denomination recharge (~15%) and full recharge (~13%) option featured as a reason.

Therefore, there seems to be a consensus among subscribers that pricing is not a decision maker, wonder why the Telcos are at a price war hitting their ARPUs

The over all finding reveals that good coverage is the major reason across age, gender and circles will be a wakeup call for most of the service providers, who were under the impression that brand and good tariff plans alone will make them sail through the customers mind share.

Also, an interesting finding was that IDEA/RCOM was among the top 3 performers in terms of brand image ahead of  Tata, MTS and Uninor.

As a TT reader what do you think can good coverage can be the only reason for selecting a service provider or tariff and brand image plays a major role do let us know via comments.