Airtel Topping MNP Charts

Airtel is the top most in demand for subscribers across the country to switch to with the help of MNP, according to a recent survey by Market Xcel—one of India’s leading end-to-end market research firms that provides custom market research solutions.

Key highlights of the survey were:

Consumers will most likely switch to Airtel followed by Vodafone.

25% of the respondents are willing to part with their current service provider.

Network quality tends to be the key trigger for switching to and from a particular provider as well as the reason for loyalty with the existing operator.

Globally, MNP rollout has met with mixed results. Churn due to MNP has ranged from 22% in the US to 0.4% in Portugal. Low impact of number portability in Singapore was primarily due to limited tariff cuts by the operators, while high porting charges were responsible for similar results in Japan and Taiwan. Experience indicates that the impact of number portability has turned out to be less of a challenge as compared to what operators feared it would be.

Other key findings of the survey show that the awareness for MNP at the first level is moderately low at 41% within the target socio groups A to C, but after explaining it in little detail it was almost 83%. Word of mouth along with television ads is the major source of information for the larger audience to generate awareness of MNP.

Close to 93% respondents to the survey agreed that MNP is beneficial for consumers. However only 25% at this juncture are willing to part with their current service providers.

The category audience believes that pre-paid users, according to the survey are most likely to opt for change under MNP than the post-paid users . The Indian government chose to implement MNP primarily to ensure greater competition. While the market is predominantly pre-paid, it is envisaged that competition will foster innovation in products and pricing strategies. Further, operators will be forced to re-look at the levels of customer service, according to the survey.

Effect of MNP would lead to emergence of new technologies and decrease the consumer loyalty is also indicated through this survey. The true, long term impact of MNP remains to be seen. However, it is quite clear that MNP will force the operators to revise their strategies to retain a competitive edge.

akankshas@cybermedia.co.in