Customers want more choices in how they can mix and match services, and they are willing to pay for a greater degree of personalization across services, such as: Email, Web Browsing, Social Networking, Multi-User Gaming, Sports/News/Video, Voice over IP, TV and Movies, Cloud, Remote Lock/Remote Wipe.

In addition, customers ranked pricing concepts based on Usage and Specific Applications higher than those based on Bandwidth/Performance, Family Sharing/Bundling of Devices, Casual Usage, or Free Access with Advertising. Service providers have an opportunity to generate incremental revenues if they sell tailored services to customers whose devices are capable, but not yet part of a mobile data plan.

These are just a couple of the insights found in Signals Research Group’s “Mobile Broadband Pricing and Bundling – the Voice of the Consumer,” a report of unparalleled scope in quantitative and statistical analyses about subscribers’ preferences for pricing and service bundles, and the factors driving their choices.

Sponsored by Tekelec, the report provides composite and regional data gathered from almost 3,500 mobile broadband consumers spanning five countries: Brazil, India, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The result is a gold mine of information service providers can use to build personalized revenue-generating services and customer loyalties. “Understanding demographic differences, device ownership, and existing service experience indicators will help service providers understand customers – what engages them, what disenchants them, what moves and inspires them – not only as individuals, but also as members of communities and groups in an increasingly mobile and social-media-oriented world,” said Houck Reed, vice president, product management and marketing, Tekelec.

Some key takeaways from the report include:

Usage-Based Pricing and Paying for Specific Applications are the preferred pricing concepts on a global basis.

• Family Sharing is the preferred pricing model in South Korea and comes in second out of seven in the United States.
• Free Access ranked very differently country by country, providing an indicator of which countries might be more amenable to mobile advertising and subsidized free access than others. For example, 86% of respondents in Brazil expressed interest in Free Access as a pricing concept.

Security (Remote Lock/Remote Wipe), Web Browsing, and Email stand out as the preferred services on a global basis.

• Brazil, India, and South Korea prefer consumer/entertainment-oriented services like VoIP and Video, while the United Kingdom and the United States prefer productivity-oriented services like Web Browsing and Email.

In all countries surveyed, respondents strongly preferred a bundle of multiple services (two or three or four of their choosing) to any single service.

• While they don’t need to have an infinite selection, customers want some choice and variety, because they want to use their mobile device for more than one application.

In addition to key findings, the report reveals important correlations among data, such as:

• Hotspot usage is an indicator that subscribers allocate mobile data spend to Wi-Fi, which can be a red flag for new business opportunity.
• Respondents who do not currently use mobile broadband with a tablet or laptop, but who do pay for hotspot connectivity represent a viable untapped market.
• Enthusiasts who pay for hotspot access spend $104 per year on hotspots vs. $76 per year for Non-Enthusiasts (Interestingly, there are a significant number of people who spend more than $500/year on hotspots in Brazil, whereas in the U.K., the majority don’t spend a penny on hotspots).

These are just some of the findings that operators can use to gauge consumer appetite for more sophisticated pricing and bundling.

“This is a unique report in that operators hear the voices of their consumers: how they use mobile broadband services, what pricing models they prefer, what services they prefer, and what factors influence their mobile broadband purchasing decisions,” said J. Randolph Luening, vice president, Wireless Economics at Signals Research Group.

Supporting Resources

“Mobile Broadband Pricing and Bundling – the Voice of the Consumer” preview white paper

Policy Everywhere: A Strategic Imperative for Digital Lifestyle Providers white paper

Mobile Policy Gateway product brief

Application Manager product brief

Policy Analytics product brief

Why Tekelec for Policy: Key Considerations in Selecting a Next-Generation Policy Server

Policy Server product brief

About Tekelec

Tekelec’s intelligent mobile broadband solutions enable service providers to manage and monetize mobile data and evolve to LTE and IMS. We are the architects of the new Diameter network, the foundation for session, policy and subscriber data management. More than 300 service providers use our market-leading solutions to deliver cloud, machine-to-machine and personalized services to consumers and enterprises. For more information visit www.tekelec.com.

About Signals Research Group

Signals Research Group (SRG) offers thought-leading field research and consulting services covering the wireless telecommunications industry. The "no holds barred" approach to conducting research and analysis means that SRG's first and foremost objective is to offer differentiated research products and services. Instead of just capturing market data analyzing past events, SRG focus on where the industry will be tomorrow and the technologies and service offerings that will shape its future and not those that defined its past (www.signalsresearch.com).