The Hindu Business Line : Mobile operators fall short on performance parameters: Survey

FIVE out of 11 mobile operators in the country have fallen short on their performance parameters vis-à-vis 2004 on issues such as sales-pre sales, network quality, billing, customer care and value-added services, according to the third VOICE&DATA Mobile Users' Satisfaction Survey.

The decline was a general industry trend, which spanned almost all operators. However, the overall user satisfaction went up by 0.92 percentage points, as compared to 2004.

According to the survey, the TRAI benchmark (95 per cent) on quality of service remained elusive for all operators except BPL and MTNL.

With operators' focus more on increasing the customer base than on improving customers' satisfaction, B&C circles recorded a higher level of growth in recent months, the survey said.

Users were not happy with the network performance. The satisfaction with network was lower in rural India, both the GSM and CDMA networks scoring low points.

Network performance satisfaction also hit low marks the level of satisfaction going down more in rural India. Both the GSM and CDMA networks score low on user satisfaction.

SMS has been a big hit with 99 per cent of the respondents using it. Billing complaints continued to mount. Except for Reliance Infocomm, there was a significant decline in satisfaction level of customers of all operators, the survey pointed out.