NAPERVILLE, Ill., Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- With mobile TV just beginning to take off in the United States, service providers can learn from the experiences of mobile TV users in Europe. A survey of 22,000 European mobile service users commissioned by Tellabs revealed that former users of mobile TV and video now outnumber current users by more than 19%. The research, conducted by M:Metrics in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and Spain, cited price, reliability and quality issues as the main reasons why users do not come back for more.
"Pricing has already been highlighted as a stumbling block for recurrent use of mobile video and TV services, but we were surprised by just how much value users place on quality and reliability," said Paul Goode, senior analyst, M:Metrics. "Once the basic requirements of quality and reliability are good enough, the focus will rightly shift to issues of programming, brands and marketing in addition to price. This research highlights the need to address quality and reliability so the industry can retain viewers, which is a key part of growing audience numbers."
Forty-five percent of European mobile video and TV users cited pricing issues as a factor causing them to switch off the services. And nearly a quarter (24%) of users who had tried mobile video and TV stopped using it due to concerns about service quality and reliability.
The split between perception and reality was most pronounced in the United Kingdom. Only 6% of those who had never used mobile TV and video cited quality and reliability as reasons not to try such services, but 29% of users had stopped using services because of quality and reliability.
"Mobile companies in the United States can learn a lot about customer acceptance of mobile TV and video services from this survey," said Don Hutton, vice president, Tellabs. "It shows how important it is to have efficient backhaul networks that can satisfy the high expectations of mobile TV users."
New high-bandwidth services such as mobile video combined with the increasing number of mobile users cause strain on backhaul networks. This capacity crunch can directly affect the quality and reliability of new 3G services. Service providers need a backhaul architecture that automatically allocates bandwidth and priority to prevent bottlenecks. To ensure users can enjoy mobile TV, operators are migrating to pseudowire-based platforms that enable Ethernet backhauling with strict Quality of Service and high reliability. Tellabs addresses these needs with the Tellabs(R) IntegratedMobile(SM) solution. It enables service providers to act now and ensure their transport networks can deliver the services to match the hype.
About Tellabs - Tellabs advances telecommunications networks to meet the evolving needs of users. Solutions from Tellabs enable service providers to deliver high-quality voice, video and data services over wireline and wireless networks around the world. Ranked among the BusinessWeek InfoTech 100, Tellabs is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index, NASDAQ Global Select Market and the S&P 500. http://www.tellabs.com/
About M:Metrics - M:Metrics is the pioneer in measuring consumer consumption of mobile content and applications, benchmarking the performance of carriers, handset OEMs, platform vendors, media companies and others. M:Metrics monthly syndicated services empower senior executives in the mobile content and wireless applications sector to make better business, creative, and production decisions informed by highly granular and verifiably true measures of subscriber consumption. M:Metrics, Inc is a private, venture funded corporation headquartered in Seattle with offices in San Francisco.
About M:Metrics Data - Based on continually refreshed samples of nationally representative mobile phone consumers, M:Metrics reports summarize market size, device reach, and key demographic and mobile phone usage characteristics. The data presented here is drawn from an extensive survey questionnaire that collects specific device model and carrier subscription information from each month's sample of mobile phone consumers, and also drills down into specific details related to current and past usage of various mobile phone applications and content. Data collected from each sample are statistically balanced and projected to the total national population of mobile phone consumers.
Source: M:Metrics' Survey of British, German, French, Spanish and Italian
mobile subscribers aged 13 and above in November 2006, n= 22,301.
Tellabs(R) and Tellabs logo(R) are trademarks of Tellabs or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Any other company or product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
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