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Mar. 20, 2009

Late yesterday, J.D. Power and Associates published the results from the first volume of its semi-annual Wireless Call Quality Performance Study. Verizon Wireless ranked the highest.

However, J.D. Power's research also concluded that the gap in call quality performance among wireless carriers has narrowed substantially when compared to numbers drawn from 2008.

The survey measured mobile call quality based on 7 problem areas that impact overall wireless carrier performance:

Dropped calls

Static and interference

Failed connection on the first try

Voice distortion or poor clarity

Echoes and reverberations

No immediate voicemail notification

No immediate text message notification

On average, call quality problems were measured as issues per 100 (PP 100) calls, where a lower score reflected fewer problems and higher quality with the measured carriers.

While overall call quality performance among wireless carriers still varies somewhat at the regional level, the gap between the highest and the lowest-ranked mobile carriers for the overall industry decreased from eight PP 100 in the 2008 Volume 2 study to only 5 PP 100 in the Volume 1 study for 2009.

For a 9th consecutive reporting period, Verizon Wireless ranked highest in both the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions and achieved fewer customer-reported problems in lost or dropped calls, initial connections and late text notifications, compared with other regional averages in the U.S.

In the North Central region, U.S. Cellular ranked highest for a seventh consecutive reporting period. For its part, U.S. Cellular had fewer customer-reported problems in dropped calls, initial connections, static or interference, voice distortion and late text message notifications, compared with the region average.

On average, Verizon Wireless also led in the Southwest region and actually tied with Sprint Nextel to rank highest in the West region. Sprint Nextel customers, in particular, report fewer problems regarding echoes compared with the region average, due to recent improvements in Sprint's network.

Overall consumer confidence in mobile phones increased in the first quarter of this year, as 27 percent of wireless users reported having replaced their traditional landline phones with wireless phones.

That marks an increase from 25 percent in the 2008 Volume 1 study.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0 and on Tech Blog.

Source: J.D. Power & Associates.