Nielsen / Tellabs survey another headache for the operators.
It's not a great week for mobile operators. Well, at least those mobile operators who pay attention to consumer surveys.
Earlier this week, a CCS Insight report claimed that 60% of mobile internet users in five big European countries prefer to ignore their operator portals.
Now a survey of 15,000 consumers commissioned by Tellabs and run by Nielsen indicates that consumers are looking to the likes of the BBC, Facebook and Google for their mobile content.
The survey asked people who they'd rather get these 14 services from: SMS, voice calls, MMS, applications, games, music, Internet browsing and searching, email, news weather and sports sites, social networking, location/navigation services, e-commerce, home control devices and appliances, and mobile payments.
According to Nielsen, operators were only deemed most suitable to provide three of those: voice, SMS and MMS. They expect to be getting the other 11 from third-party providers in the next six months, despite being well aware that carriers are already providing many of those services.
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That said, Nielsen also says that people trust the mobile operators - they're second only to banks when it comes to consumer trust. Which may sound like faint praise given recent global economic events.
"Clearly consumers are clamoring for smart, personalized mobile Internet services. But consumers have brought expectations from the fixed-line Internet to the mobile Internet," says Tellabs CEO Rob Pullen.
"If carriers want to stay in the game and avoid becoming 'dumb pipes', they need to use the valuable assets they already have, such as location-awareness, and to make networks smarter for personalization. They need to act now – and act fast."
