[gorilla]

On the bbc news site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6618187.stm).

"Virgin's mobile phone service ranks highest for customer satisfaction, a survey has indicated.
Richard Branson's network provider beat its UK rivals for overall satisfaction of its pre-pay and contract services, according to JD Power and Associates.

O2, owned by Spain's Telefonica, came a close second in both segments in the annual survey, based on 2,706 telephone interviews in March and April.

The study also found mobile phone users were making fewer calls.

Pre-pay customers made 10 calls a week, down from 14 in 2006, while for contract holders, the number of calls made each week fell from 35 in 2006 to 27 in 2007.

Contract customers spend on average £32.45 per month, with Orange customers spending the most at £37 and Virgin customers spending the least at £26.50.

Virgin pre-pay customers also pay the least, spending £10.90 a month, while those with O2 fork out about £13.95 a month."

This should be a worrying trend for the networks, already keen to recoup licence fees. So what does it mean? The story doesn't tell us what total mobile usage involves, but I guess it revolves around SMS now?? Where oh where is data? If people are talking less, then please give them affordable data access. It can't be long before they realise that voice revenue can't sustain them in the long run and alternative revenues must be sought and NOT in the form of ringtones and other such crap.

What do you think?

[Ben]

Text growth is still growing massively, and many contracts are now text-heavy to allow for this, essentially allowing the networks to charge their magic £35 a month even though usage is shifting away from calls.

Voice revenue will never go away (though it may well become fully IP based), but I'm one of the many that'd rather send a text.

[solo12002]

" Virgin pre-pay customers also pay the least, spending £10.90 a month, while those with O2 fork out about £13.95 a month."

I wonder if part of this could be put down to the cost of calls, for a while there Virgin charged 3p to call other Virgin mobiles and indeed text other virgin Mobiles.

Also it costs 35p to call other networks on virgin, while its 40p on o2, could this be part of the reason Virgin users spend less as its costs less. Food for thought

[Hands0n]

It was, perhaps, inevitable that voice call rates would drop in the face of other means of communicating such as SMS, IM, VoIP (albeit via PC softphone rather than mobile handset). There is simply too much competition for voice for the Mobile Operators to compete with their head-in-the-sand policies.

They have wasted so much time looking for 3G's Killer App when it is staring them in the face - Data, Mobile Data, and lots of it. Once they get their grey cells around that simple concept the market for data consumption will explode like SMS did - providing they don't get greedy.

But it is agonising waiting and watching them miss the plainly obvious. Data is the enabler - the Golden Goose or Killer App will be along in its own time when its good and ready!

[gorilla]

I think you're right HandsOn, with the rise of social networking (and the recent deals from voda / myspace etc) the networks have to realise that the way people are communicating is changing and for them that means people will demand affordable mobile data.