The Fewest Dropped Calls

By Paul Carton

Customers have spoken, and Verizon (VZ) has the lowest percentage of dropped calls among all major U.S. service providers.

That's according to ChangeWave's latest cell phone survey of 2,883 U.S. consumers, completed Sept. 18.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Verizon subscribers report that, on average, just 2.7% of their calls were dropped during the past 90 days. That's nearly a percentage point better than AT&T (T), its closest competitor, which came in at 3.6%.



Sprint/Nextel (S) (4.4%) and T-Mobile (4.5%) were third and fourth, respectively.

Importantly, 20% of Verizon users surveyed said they didn't experience any dropped calls during the past three months, compared with 18% for T-Mobile, 17% for AT&T and 10% for Sprint/Nextel.

In addition, 43% of Verizon's customers in the survey said they're very satisfied with Verizon's service. As the following chart shows, that's also the best in the industry.

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The iPhone Factor

So, is there a downside for Verizon in the survey?

Yes, and it's a big one.

AT&T is beating Verizon in the most important measure of all -- market share.

Among respondents who said they're likely to switch providers during the next six months, 31% said they're headed to AT&T, while just 19% said they'll choose Verizon.

The main reason for AT&T's advantage is pretty obvious: the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

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Ever since the iPhone announcement in January 2007, AT&T has claimed a lead over Verizon in terms of future market share in our surveys.



So, while Verizon is clearly the industry leader when it comes to customer satisfaction, it is faced with an uphill climb in terms of responding to the iPhone phenomenon.

Perhaps the new BlackBerry Storm will provide the market share jolt Verizon needs. For all of its network's great performance, it is still very much in need of a new killer phone.

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Paul Carton is the Director of Research for the ChangeWave Alliance Research Network. The Research Network is a group of 20,000 highly qualified business, technology and medical professionals -- as well as early adopter consumers -- who work in leading companies of select industries. ChangeWave surveys its Network members weekly on a range of business and consumer topics, and converts the information into a series of proprietary quantitative and qualitative reports.

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