For the past four and a half years, we’ve been tracking the popularity of UK mobile networks and how consumers are switching between them.

The UK has one of the most competitive marketplaces in the world for mobile telephony. There are more than 83 million active mobile subscriptions for a population of only 64 million. Given this, many customers taking out a new mobile phone plan will be switching their service over from another network.

At present, there are 4 network operators in the UK: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. There are also more than 20 virtual network operators (MVNOs) that use one of the big four networks as a coverage provider. Current MVNOs include BT Mobile, giffgaff, iD Mobile, TalkTalk, Tesco and Virgin. MVNOs target a wide range of verticals including ethical, low-cost, international, supermarket and quad-play providers.

When switching from one mobile network to another, many consumers choose to keep their existing phone number. The UK has offered mobile number portability (MNP) since the 4th January 1999. To transfer an existing phone number from one network to another, customers need to obtain a PAC Code from their old network. The PAC Code is then provided to their new network operator.

Here, at Ken’s Tech Tips, we provide an online tool which can help consumers to get a PAC Code from their old network. We’ve been operating the PAC Code Finder tool since October 2010 with an average of 4,000 people using the tool every month. By monitoring usage of the tool, we can track in great detail how British consumers are moving between different mobile networks in response to different product offerings.

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Ken’s Tech Tips has been tracking consumer choices in the UK mobile operator market for over a year. In this article, we reveal how the iPhone 4S has shaken up the UK mobile operator market.

At Ken’s Tech Tips, we spend a lot of time trying to understand how consumers interact with their phones and the thought processes they go through when choosing their new phone or mobile phone network. As part of that work, we’ve been carrying out research into the network choices and network switching intentions of UK mobile consumers over the past 13 months. We’ve been carrying out a poll of switching intentions and over 63,000 consumers have participated in our study over those 13 months. We now present the results of the study to date and how the release of the Apple iPhone 4S has affected the UK mobile operator market.

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Ken’s Tech Tips has been tracking the popularity of the UK’s major mobile operators over the last 9 months. In this article, we reveal how they all fare.

During the UK Election Debates of 2010, we were glued to our screens and the sentiment-tracking application known as “The Worm”. The Worm showed a real-time, second-by-second overview of the “sentiment” expressed by viewers to each politician speaking in the debate. As the party leaders made arguments which were popular with viewers, the worm moved up the screen. Meanwhile, unpopular statements which didn’t go well with the public (such as personal attacks) moved the worm down the screen.

In this article, we unveil the Ken’s Tech Tips Worm – our version of “The Worm” but for mobile operators and their respective product offerings. By collating thousands of responses about how British consumers are switching between mobile networks (assuming they vote with their feet and gravitate towards the networks they like), we’re able to track the popularity of each mobile network over time and in response to different product offerings.

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Our latest study looks at the switching intention of 7,200 consumers between February and April. Three edge out Tesco Mobile to take home the title of best performing network.

What is the Ken’s Tech Tips index?

The Ken’s Tech Tips Index is our regular study looking into how well each mobile phone network is performing in terms of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. We believe that consumers vote with their feet and that by looking at how well networks can attract and retain customers, we can determine how good a network really is.

We polled 7,205 consumers through our PAC Code Finder tool on their intention of switching network. From the responses, we determine how rapidly a network is gaining new customers and losing existing ones. The Ken’s Tech Tips “index score” is “the number of customers who join a given network for every 100 customers who leave that network”.

If a network has a high score in the Ken’s Tech Tips Index, it means they are gaining customers a lot faster than they lose them. This is perhaps a good indication that the products they provide are better value for consumers (or alternatively, it could just mean they are doing a great job with marketing their products).

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The team at billmonitor have analysed 28,000 mobile phone bills to find out how much data we’re really using and how consumers can cut their phone bills.

billmonitor calls itself the UK’s first “mobile bill analysis engine”. Unlike traditional price comparison services (which I’ve blogged about before), billmonitor takes the more scientific approach of analysing your online phone bills to work out how you use your phone rather than simply asking you to provide figures. That approach means they’ve got real numerical data on your phone usage: the calls you make, the type of calls (landline, mobile or international) and how much data you use. Using these bills, the service then makes a recommendation on the best value phone tariff as well as any add-ons you might need.

The guys at billmonitor have recently carried out some fascinating research on how people use their phones and how much people are paying for their mobile phone service. In this article, I sat down with Nick Wright from billmonitor to discuss:

• The smartphone revolution: how much data do we really use?
• How to cut your mobile phone bill
• What could the mobile phone networks do to help?

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Our latest study looks at the performance of each network in the aftermath of Christmas. Tesco Mobile again takes the title of best performing network with Three and T-Mobile both gaining ground.

What is the Ken’s Tech Tips index?

The Ken’s Tech Tips Index is our regular study looking into how well each mobile phone network is performing in terms of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. We believe that consumers vote with their feet. We believe that by looking at how well networks can attract and retain customers, we can determine how good a network really is.

We polled 8,199 people through our PAC Code Finder tool on their intention of switching network. From the responses, we determine how rapidly a network is gaining new customers and losing existing ones. The Ken’s Tech Tips “index score” is “the number of customers who join a given network for every 100 customers who leave that network”.

If a network has a high score in the Ken’s Tech Tips Index, it means they are gaining customers a lot faster than they lose them. This is perhaps a good indication that the products they provide are better value for consumers (or alternatively, it could just mean they are doing a great job with publicity or sales).

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Ken’s Tech Tips graphically visualises how UK punters have been switching network and finds out who the winners and the losers are.

In this study, Ken’s Tech Tips polled more than 6,000 people over a 2 month period to find out how they’re switching mobile network. We’ve visualised this data to look at the net movement of customers from network to network. Our graphs show which networks are losing customers, which networks are gaining customers and where the customers are coming from.

Background Information

For this visualisation, we polled 6,145 people through our PAC Code Finder tool between October 20th 2010 and December 19th 2010 (the same data set used in our “Ken’s Tech Tips Index” study of network performance).

Respondents were asked to “select your current network provider and the network that you wish to move to” from a drop down menu of 9 mobile networks: 3 (Three), O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, ASDA Mobile, Giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and Virgin Mobile. These 9 networks form our study.

From the 9 networks, we took each pair of networks in turn. We looked at the “net movement” of customers between each pair of networks and have visualised it in the graph below. For example, if 200 customers switch from Network A to Network B and 100 customers switch from Network B to Network A, the “net movement” of customers would be 100 customers from Network A to Network B. This would be represented by a line pointing from Network A to Network B in our visualisation.

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