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`Spice meets user satisfaction benchmark'

Anand Parthasarathy

Subscriber base for mobile service stands at 90 m

BANGALORE: The fast-growing mobile telephone service in India is cheap but is it good? Is affordability being achieved at the cost of quality?

These questions will arise after Thursday's release by technology monitor IDC (India), of the Indian mobile services usage and satisfaction survey for 2006. Conducted across the four metros and ten other cities of all sizes, the survey reveals that only one service provider — Spice Telecom — is above the satisfaction benchmark set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) — the regulator for the telecom industry. The level set by TRAI is 95 per cent on overall customer satisfaction.

Ironically, the lone service provider, whose customers are substantially satisfied, is a relatively smaller player, restricted to Karnataka and Punjab. Spice, which IDC crowns, `King of the Ring', proves, small is beautiful, in the mobile business.

The nationally operating `biggies' have less satisfied customers — although overall satisfaction across all providers has improved since last year by two percentage points.

Speaking to The Hindu, IDC's Senior Manager, Vishaal Bhatnagar, pointed to another interesting trend that the survey threw up: the Indian mobile user is a `roamer' in an unusual sense:

As many as 28 per cent of users shift services, even if they were satisfied with their present provider — lured by an even better service or (more likely) by `special offers'.

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