Consumers remain satisfied amid concerns: TRA surveys

Manama : The overall consumer satisfaction with telecommunication services in the Kingdom has remained high (above 90 per cent) in 2015, revealed key surveys yesterday, which also raised concerns regarding poor indoor mobile coverage and data quality. 

The reports by Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) in 2015 also pointed out that the customers were highly dissatisfied about lack of staff knowledge and long waiting time in shops and call centres, besides experience of consumers who had formally submitted complaints to Broadband Providers.

The two residential surveys- Telecommunications Markets Survey and Consumer Experience Survey - covered a representative sample of 1,196 and 1,520 consumers respectively.

Commenting on the consumers’ satisfaction report, TRA’s Manager of Media and Public Relations Abdulelah Abdulla said, “The Consumer Experience Survey detailed that consumers are suffering from indoor mobile coverage with dissatisfaction level of 32 per cent and mobile data quality with dissatisfaction level of 38pc. Consumers are also dissatisfied with the waiting time over the call centre and in shops of the mobile operators, where dissatisfaction level was recorded at 36pc and 32pc.”

Commenting on the survey results, TRA’s Acting Director of Consumer Affairs and Media Taiba Albinali said: “While the Authority already gathers market statistics from licensed operators which represents the ‘supply-side’ perspective of the market, it is also valuable to obtain information from the ‘demand-side’ consumer perspective in order to understand how they use telecommunications services.”

“The Consumer Experience Survey results have identified some areas of concerns to consumers that need to be addressed collectively by TRA and service providers to ensure that residential consumers in the Kingdom are enjoying better experience,” she added.

The Telecommunications Markets Survey revealed that 100pc respondents have access to mobile phone and 89pc have access to Internet at home while only 12pc have access to fixed line service. It shows that average usage of SMS per week has decreased dramatically from 20 SMSs per week in 2011 to only 2 SMSs per week in 2015. It shows that free messaging applications represents 93pc while SMS represents only 7pc of respondents. Majority of respondents in 2015 use mobile phones to make weekly international calls, followed by smartphone applications.

The survey also examined the switching behaviour among different telecommunications service providers. About 12pc of respondents who own fixed line have switched their fixed line providers in 2015. Same percentage of respondents has switched their mobile service providers and 10pc has switched their Internet service providers. “Quality of service” is the main reason for switching for fixed line service, “attractive promotion” for mobile phone service and the “better prices” for Internet service.