Cheap monthly fees most important mobile feature

A recent survey from MMD Labo looked at user satisfaction with the Big Three Plus One mobile carriers of docomo, au, SoftBank and the new kid, Rakuten UN-LIMIT, specifically at their data services.

The Rakuten UN-LIMIT advertisement is horrendously shouty and I cringe whenever it comes on TV, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t suffer too!

I just checked the comments, and most of them are complaining – best was “Instead of lowering the cost, lower the volume!”

Research results

Q1A: What is the most important feature of the carrier that you use? (Sample size=1,200)

Monthly fee	37.9%
Ease of data connection	14.0%
Data transmission speed	9.5%
Richness of service plans	5.6%
Richness of device lineup	5.5%
Reliability of data transmission security	5.4%
Customer support	5.2%
Understandable service plans	4.8%
Information about service offerrings	3.4%
Richness of optional services	3.3%
Value of optional services	2.8%
Ease of entering, cancelling contract	2.6%

Q1B: What is the most important feature of the carrier that you use? (Sample size=300, top five, docomo users)

Ease of data connection	27.3%
Monthly fee	19.7%
Data transmission speed	13.0%
Reliability of data transmission security	9.0%
Customer support	7.7%

Q1C: What is the most important feature of the carrier that you use? (Sample size=300, top five, au users)

Monthly fee	29.0%
Ease of data connection	15.7%
Data transmission speed	11.3%
Richness of service plans	6.7%
Customer support	6.3%

Q1D: What is the most important feature of the carrier that you use? (Sample size=300, top five, SoftBank users)

Monthly fee	28.3%
Richness of device lineup	11.3%
Ease of data connection	11.3%
Data transmission speed	11.0%
Richness of service plans	7.3%

Q1E: What is the most important feature of the carrier that you use? (Sample size=300, top five, Rakuten UN-LIMIT users)

Monthly fee	74.7%
Understandable service plans	6.0%
Richness of service plans	4.3%
Data transmission speed	2.7%
Value of optional services	2.3%

In the following table, each aspect was rated on a scale of one to five, with the maximum being 1,500 points per category per carrier. The final total was taken by adding each score up and then dividing by six to get a rating between 100 and 1,000.

Q2: How satisfied are you with the following aspects of your carrier? (Sample size=1,200)

	docomo	au	SoftBank	Rakuten UN-LIMIT
Pricing	Third	Second	Fourth	First
	864	889	832	1182
Service	Second	First	Fourth	Third
	972	994	931	970
Transmission quality	First	Second	Third	Fourth
	1084	1083	981	976
Customer service	First	Second	Fourth	Third
	1003	992	918	962
Overall	Third	Second	Fourth	First
	634	643	596	713

For this question, the respondents rated their answers between 0 and 10, and then they were bundled as 9 or 10 being likely to recommend, 7 or 8 perhaps likely, and 0 to 6 not likely.

Q3: How likely are you to recommend your carrier to family, friends? (Sample size=1,200)

	Total	docomo	au	SoftBank	Rakuten UN-LIMIT
Likely	12.4%	11.0%	14.3%	6.0%	18.3%
Perhaps	35.2%	31.7%	38.7%	31.0%	39.3%
Perhaps not	52.4%	57.3%	47.0%	63.0%	42.3%

Demographics

Between the 16th and 18th of October 2020 1,200 members of the MMD monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 300 of the sample had their main mobile phone contract with each of the four main carriers, namely docomo, au, SoftBank and Rakuten UN-LIMIT, and were all aged between 15 and 69 years old.