Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Wireless
  • /
  • Customers will stay loyal to the best performing network

Customers will stay loyal to the best performing network


Johannesburg, 05 Jun 2014

The dramatic increase in mobile data subscriptions and the uptake of smartphones across sub-Saharan Africa will place quality and coverage demands on mobile networks across the region. Mobile data traffic will grow 17 fold from now until 2019. Total subscriptions are forecasted to increase from 560 million in 2013 to 930 million at the end of 2019.

The increased data traffic will be driven by an uptake in smartphones and a corresponding increase in Web browsing, social media and mobile video in particular. In this scenario app coverage will become a crucial factor in network performance and consequently the user experience. By app coverage we mean the area in which the network performance is sufficient to run a specific app at an acceptable quality level.

These trends will make demands on operators both in terms of network and app coverage as well as network quality. Social media networking and related activities across sub-Saharan Africa is driven by the youth segment in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. We have seen around the world that when it comes to social media or web browsing in general that speed is the key. Every second delay between a click and a download increases the chances of the user looking for something else.

To stand out from the competition, operators in sub-Saharan Africa need to deliver an experience that exceeds users' current expectations. To do this they must deliver a higher quality of services across all applications, in any situation, and for all devices. We live in an age of apps and they will become more widespread as networks get faster and phones get smarter. Each app has its own demands for network performance in terms of both throughput and latency. We feel that these demands will require a new approach from operators that takes a diverse set of performance demands into consideration.

A fast and reliable internet will be pivotal to enabling social media and to allow us to fully benefit from the potential of mobile data to transform lives in education, health, commerce and government. We have already seen the transformative impact of mobile banking across the region. This impact will deepen as more and more banking apps are introduced by mobile operators and financial institutions, and more people connect to the mobile Internet. Offering services and apps to consumers also requires a network that can support the user experience.

In 2013 Ericsson's Consumer Lab has conducted a survey of 9 040 smartphone users across various countries aged 18-69. The report found that the main contributor towards customer loyalty was driven to a large degree by network performance. In fact network performance had twice the impact on customer loyalty compared to measures such as improved customer support and four times as effective as introducing loyalty rewards.

Network performance is therefore intrinsically entwined with customer loyalty. Indeed the Consumer Lab report reveals that network performance is the principal driver of subscriber loyalty to mobile operators, followed by value for money.

Ericsson's vision is of a networked society of a billion connected devices by 2020. We are seeing the dawn of the networked society in Africa. Operators, network suppliers and device manufacturers all have a unique opportunity to work together and develop the network and device environment that will drive economic growth across the region.

Share

Editorial contacts

Shiletsi Makhofane
Ericsson