How Their Service Stacks Up

By Paul Carton and Jim Woods

The latest ChangeWave survey on cellular service providers shows the battle between AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) is raging on.

The Dec. 9-15 survey asked 3,800 respondents to identify their current cellular service provider, and AT&T topped the list with 31% -- up one point from the previous survey in September. Verizon (30%) came in a very close second, also up one point.

Sprint Nextel (S) (down one point to 10%) and T-Mobile (unchanged with 10%) remain at the rear of the pack.

When it comes to customer satisfaction, however, it's a whole different story. The battle isn't even close.

As the following chart shows, Verizon (49%) holds a commanding lead over AT&T (30%) in terms of the percentage of its customers who said they are very satisfied with their cellular service provider.



Once again, T-Mobile (27%) and Sprint Nextel (25%) came in last.

What's Ahead for 2009?

To get a sense of where the battle between AT&T and Verizon is headed in the first half 2009, we asked respondents if they planned to switch cellular service providers in the next six months. And among those saying they're likely to make a change, we asked which cellular service they planned on switching to.



AT&T still tops the list, garnering 27% of potential switchers, but that's down four points from September. Verizon (22%) has gained three points since September.

Sprint Nextel (up two points to 5%) and T-Mobile (down two points to 5%) are tied for third place.

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Just Drop It!

The ChangeWave survey also took a look at dropped calls -- one of the biggest factors when it comes to cellular service provider satisfaction.

To see how the industry titans measure up in terms of the number of dropped calls, we asked our respondents to tell us the percentage of their calls that were dropped during the past 90 days.

Verizon was the clear winner. Its customers reported an average of just 2.2% of their calls dropped during the past 90 days.



Sprint Nextel was second with an average of 3.4% of calls dropped, followed by AT&T with 3.7%. Reporting the most drops were T-Mobile customers with 4%.

With Verizon customers reporting the lowest dropped-call rate in the industry, it's no surprise that their overall customer satisfaction rating was the highest.

So why does AT&T hold a slim market share lead over Verizon?

Actually, the answer is pretty simple -- the Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

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Paul Carton is the Director of Research for the ChangeWave Alliance Research Network. Jim Woods is a Senior Editor for ChangeWave. 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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