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UK Awareness and usage of Advanced Telecoms Services Report of Business Users (Sept 1999) Prepared for Oftel by BMRB International |
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| Residential report
Contents INTRODUCTION Awareness of telecoms services
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Introduction Oftel, the regulator of the UK telecoms market, aims to ensure that customers obtain the best possible deal from telecoms services, primarily through promoting competition in telecoms networks and services. As part of this, Oftel seeks to assess the effectiveness of the UK telecoms market in bringing advanced, innovative, customer focussed services and products to the market place to meet customers demands. Oftel commissioned BMRB to repeat a survey previously conducted in December 1997 by NERA and IFF Research into the awareness, and take-up of advanced telecoms services amongst UK businesses and residential users in the UK. As one of the aims of this survey was to compare the findings with those from 1997, where possible the questionnaire this time matched that used previously in all crucial respects. A number of questions were added, to reflect changing areas of interest, and others were adapted or streamlined, where it was felt that their current structure was not ‘respondent friendly’. This was an important consideration as a number the services being researched involved complicated technical phraseology. A copy of the questionnaire used in the business survey can be found in the appendices at the end of the report. This report discusses the findings of the business survey. Results from the residential survey can be found in a separate volume. The sampling frame for this part of the survey was the Business Database’s list of business establishments. This is a comprehensive list of around 2 million UK businesses with a business telephone line. Each entry contains details of the name, address and telephone number of the business, and can be classified according to size (number of employees) and by business sector (using the Standard Industrial Classification). As specified in the project brief, businesses were sampled with a probability proportional to the number of employees, such that larger companies had a greater chance than smaller companies of being included. This meant that smaller businesses were oversampled, relative to their proportion in reality. Therefore, the sample was drawn to achieve interviews in the proportions shown on the table over the page. The actual number/proportion of interviews achieved, prior to weighting, is also shown.
Table I: Business sample – Business size
The sample was also structured by one of four business sectors. As can be seen, the proportion of interviews in each sector was close to the target specified. Table II: Business sample - Business sector
The survey was conducted using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) at BMRB’s Telephone Centre in Ealing. Interviews were conducted by fully trained interviewers working under supervision to precise instructions, in accordance with the Market Research Society code of conduct, and within the requirements of the Interviewer Quality Control Scheme. Interviewing for the business survey was conducted between the 11th May and 2nd June; interviewing for the residential survey between 19th and 31st May. A target of 520 interviews was set both for the business and residential surveys. The residential survey achieved 520 interviews, whilst the business survey achieved 505. For the survey of businesses, it was decided that interviews should only be conducted with the person responsible for making telecoms decisions at that establishment. Thus if an interviewer contacted a local branch of a bank, for example, they would interview the person at that branch responsible for the telecoms decisions at the local level, even if most of the telecoms decisions (supplier, services needed/used) were made on a company wide basis at Head Office. In order to ensure a broad distribution of businesses (in terms of location – such as city centre, rural - and geographical region) interviewing at branch level was the best approach (as it is likely that many companies would have their Head Offices in London or the South East). For the residential survey, interviews were conducted with the person who is responsible for, or normally sees the telephone bill, as these were judged to be the people most likely to make decisions about the telecoms services used in the household. Two technical errors occurred during fieldwork. In the 1997 survey respondents were repeatedly asked "who supplies you with…?" for each service used. In 1999 the list of services was significantly longer and piloting revealed that respondents with only one supplier were irritated by this repetition. Consequently we inserted an early question to identify those with only one supplier, so that they need not be asked this question for each service. Unfortunately some respondents did not include mobile suppliers when answering the new question, requiring us to change the question text during fieldwork, to include a prompt to specify that we also wanted mobile suppliers. Thus the data showing proportions using each mobile supplier are calculated from the responses after this change. The second point to note relates to the base size for awareness and use of the various mobile services. Due to an error in the original CATI script some of these questions were asked of inappropriate respondents. Consequently BMRB conducted a "re-contact survey" of those affected, from 13th-27th July. 80% of those affected were successfully re-interviewed on the affected questions. This means that the base sizes for questions on mobile services are slightly lower than would otherwise have been the case. For example, tables based on all respondents show the base size of 505, except for mobile services which are based on 417 (shown as weighted figure of 416 on the tables). Weighting was applied to the final data to make sure that the final proportion of interviews for each business size matched those specified originally by correcting for the effects of the sampling and interviewing (see Table I). It must be noted that the aim of this was to match the proportions achieved in the 1997 survey by IFF, in order to ensure comparability between the two studies. This means that in this study, as in 1997, there is a lower proportion of small businesses (up to 50 employees) than would occur ‘naturally’ amongst businesses as a whole.
BT was used at 9 in 10 businesses interviewed in this survey. Cable & Wireless was used by just under one in five. Other fixed line operators accounted for only one or two percent each. Just over half of businesses interviewed used more than one telecoms supplier, both fixed line and mobile or two fixed line suppliers. Businesses with more than one supplier tended to be larger and have higher telecoms spend. The majority of businesses were aware that, in general, competition existed but specific awareness of alternative suppliers is quite low – a fifth of respondents could not think of an alternative supplier who could supply all or most of the telecoms services available. It appears that satisfaction with current supplier is the most common reason for not changing supplier. BT Cellnet is the leading supplier in the mobile market with almost two fifths of businesses using this supplier. Vodafone follows closely behind with almost one-third of businesses. Awareness of telecoms services As was the case in 1997, awareness of advanced telecoms services varies greatly, ranging from over 90% (the Internet) to less than 20% (for example, for some of the data network services such as Frame Relay). The services with the broadest applicability across business size and sector are those with the highest levels of awareness, for example the Internet, Mobile phones and Voice Mail. Awareness was lowest amongst those services that had a narrower commercial applicability (for example data networking services). In addition, awareness was highest for those services that respondents may have encountered in their domestic telecoms use (Mobile phones, Caller Number Display, Voice Mail and Freephone numbers), or those with a generally high profile anyway (the Internet, E-mail and Websites being a good example of this). Awareness of telecoms services was highest amongst those companies with over 200 employees and those companies with the highest telecoms spend (over £25,000 each year). This is not particularly surprising: for companies with a large number of employees, telecoms services will be crucial to allow communication and the transfer of information between different people. Clearly, for companies with a high telecoms spend, it is likely that they are more dependent on a wider range of services, and this contributes to their telecoms bill. Region did not appear to impact on awareness of telecoms services, and differences by business sector were confined to the more specialist services. Where differences did occur, the Manufacturing and Finance/business services sectors tended to be most familiar with telecoms services. In comparison with the 1997 survey, awareness of telecoms services has increased for all but one of the services in this survey. Those services where awareness has increased in particular are those with medium levels of awareness (around a quarter to a half of all businesses interviewed) in 1997, such as Flexible Billing, Personal Numbers, Mobile Short Message Services, National Rate Numbers, Intranets and Mobile Data. Usage of advanced telecoms services As with awareness, there was great variation in the usage of telecoms services, ranging from more than 50% of respondents (the Internet) to fewer than 5% (e.g. Network ATM). Businesses with more than 200 employees and those with annual telecoms spend of over £25,000 were most likely to use telecoms services (linking to the point made in the summary to the previous chapter about awareness). There was differentiation between business sector in terms of usage: the Manufacturing (etc.) and Finance/business services sectors were most likely to use advanced services. There was also some evidence to suggest that businesses in London were more likely to use them. Since 1997 usage of telecoms services has increased considerably, especially amongst the services that respondents are particularly familiar with (such as the Internet, Caller Number Display and Voice Mail). For other services, (such as data networking services) progress has been slower, although an increase in usage has still occurred. However, as noted earlier, the services with the lowest levels of usage are those which are applicable to certain commercial contexts – for example where communications is necessary between different sites, or where data transfer is commonplace. Only a minority of respondents anticipated getting any of the services that they did not already have in the next 6 months. One in eight respondents overall said that they were likely to get the Internet in the next 6 months and the same said that they would get ISDN (mainly smaller businesses). Those respondents who did not expect to get services in the next 6 months said that this was because they simply did not need to use this service.
This chapter gives an overview of the telecoms suppliers that are used by, or available to, businesses in the UK, and examines knowledge of alternatives within the market. Rather than examining those operators providing specific services, this chapter will look at the suppliers used in general. This will provide a useful source of comparison when the suppliers of specific services are discussed in Chapter 3. Almost nine in ten respondents interviewed in this survey, (88%), said they used BT – around five times more than the next fixed line supplier, Cable & Wireless, used by (17%) of businesses in this survey. Other fixed line suppliers only accounted for one or two per cent of businesses each; not surprising given that only BT and Cable & Wireless can offer national coverage. The smaller fixed line operators tend to be based in particular geographical regions and the penetration of these operators in the relevant regions would not be picked up by this survey, which aimed to achieve a regionally representative spread of respondents from businesses across the UK. However, the findings from this survey can give a broad overall view of the telecoms market in the UK. Table 1.1.1 below shows the fixed line telecoms suppliers used by 2% or more of businesses interviewed. Table 1.1.1: Fixed line suppliers used at establishment Base: All respondents (505)
Note that the figures add to more than 100%, indicating that a significant minority had more than one fixed line supplier. The percentage of companies using BT was fairly consistent across geographical regions, although businesses in Wales (100%) and Scotland (94%) were particularly likely to use BT as their fixed line supplier. Cable and Wireless was stronger in London (27%), Scotland (24%) and Northern Ireland (24%) where it was used by about a quarter of the businesses surveyed in this study. In terms of business sector, Cable and Wireless was particularly used by businesses in the Finance and Business services sector (25%). In comparison, the use of BT was fairly consistent (i.e. nine out of ten businesses.) Size of business also seemed to impact upon the choice of telecoms supplier (see Table 1.1.2 below). The largest businesses (200+ employees) were more likely than medium or small businesses to use suppliers other than BT. Whilst nine out of ten small (1-49 employees) and medium sized (50-199) businesses used BT as their fixed line supplier, only 80% of large businesses did. Larger businesses were more than twice as likely to use Cable and Wireless than medium businesses (38% compared with 15%) and almost five times as likely to use Cable & Wireless than small businesses (38% compared with 8%). Table 1.1.2: Fixed line suppliers used – Business size Base: All respondents
Amongst those who used mobile phones, BT Cellnet was the leading supplier, with Vodafone in second place. Only a very small number of respondents used One-2-One. It is clear from Table 1.1.3 below, which totals to more that 100%, that some businesses have more than one mobile phone supplier. Table 1.1.3: Mobile suppliers used at establishment Base: All respondents using mobile phone (178)
In terms of business size, there appear to be two key differences with respect to mobile suppliers. Firstly, large businesses were more likely to use mobile suppliers at all than smaller businesses (see Table 1.1.4). Secondly, whilst for the smaller businesses, BT Cellnet is the supplier most commonly used, the largest businesses are most likely to use Vodafone. Again, in all three size groups some businesses appeared to have more than one supplier of mobile phones: this seemed most likely for medium and large businesses. Table 1.1.4: Mobile suppliers used – Business size Base: All respondents using mobile phones
More than half of all the businesses interviewed (51%) used more than one telecoms supplier. Single supplied businesses were overwhelmingly supplied by BT (83% used BT), and tended to have fewer than 50 employees. Businesses with over 200 employees, with high telecoms spend (over £25,000 each year) and in the Manufacturing (etc.) sector were particularly likely to be supplied by 2 or more operators. Businesses in Scotland appeared most likely to have only one supplier, and those in Wales and London were most likely to have more than one supplier. Almost a third (31%) of businesses in London said that they had more than two telecoms suppliers, compared with only a fifth of businesses nationally. Nine in ten of the businesses with more than one telecoms supplier used BT, and three in ten used Cable and Wireless, indicating a considerable overlap between the two suppliers (it is worth noting here that Cable & Wireless can be used indirectly on BT lines). Most respondents appear to be aware of the existence of competition in the telecoms market: 51% of all used more than one supplier and of those respondents who said that they only used one supplier, three quarters said that there was a choice of suppliers available to them. However, the full range of competition is not widely appreciated. All respondents using any of the services listed, were asked whether they could think of any other telecoms suppliers who could supply all or most of the services they used, in order to provide a useful indication of awareness of alternative telecoms suppliers. The results can be seen on Table 1.3.1 below. The suppliers named most frequently were Cable & Wireless (23%), BT (15%) and Mercury (13%) – as might be expected, respondents tended to name those suppliers providing national coverage, as they would be more likely to have heard of them (although Mercury is now part of Cable & Wireless). Given this concentration of awareness in just two organisations, along with the fact that 18% of respondents said that they did not know any alternative telecoms suppliers for the services they used, the ‘quality’ of understanding about competition in the market appears poor, despite the great majority being aware that it exists. Table 1.3.1: Alternative suppliers of telecoms services Base: All who use services (448)
Awareness of alternative suppliers has no clear pattern in terms of business size. For example, large businesses were most likely to name Energis, which only supplies businesses, as an alternative supplier. However large businesses were also more likely to say that they did not know any alternative suppliers, (27% compared with 13% of the smallest businesses) although, as many of these businesses have more than one supplier, they have less ‘alternatives’ available to name. Large businesses were most likely to name BT as alternative supplier, and least likely to name Cable & Wireless – unsurprising as these same businesses are most likely to use Cable & Wireless and least likely to use BT.
Table 1.3.2: Alternative suppliers of telecoms services – Business size All respondents who use services
Those respondents who used any of the services were asked why they did not change their supplier. Aside from the fact awareness of specific alternative suppliers is not particularly high, it appears that the key reason why most businesses do not change telecoms suppliers is that they are satisfied with that supplier. A third of respondents (33%) said that they were satisfied with their current supplier or saw no need to change supplier, and 9% said that their current supplier was best value for money. Inertia could be a further reason why respondents were reluctant to change: 7% said changing supplier would cause too much disruption and 3% said that they could not be bothered/weren’t interested. Whilst these respondents may not explicitly say that they are satisfied with their supplier, neither do they appear to have sufficient reason to be dissatisfied. Nevertheless it should be noted that 5% of businesses that use telecoms services had "only recently changed supplier" while a further 5% claimed that they were "considering changing/will change soon". Another 6% reported that the decision was made by head office, and therefore they could not give a reason. Only 1% said that it was "too difficult to work out which is cheaper/better", though it should be remembered that this was a question asking for spontaneous responses, and this figure may have been higher if they had been prompted with this suggestion. All respondents were asked to rate how satisfied they were with the range of services available from their current telecoms supplier: nine out of ten respondents overall said that they were satisfied with their current supplier, with 41% saying that they were ‘very satisfied’. Those respondents in businesses in the ‘low’ telecoms spend category (less than £1,000 per annum) were most likely to be satisfied overall with their supplier. Those in the ‘medium’ category (£1,000-24,999 per annum), gave the lowest rating, though again the great majority were either very or quite satisfied. BT was used at 9 in 10 businesses interviewed in this survey. Cable & Wireless was used by just under one in five. Other fixed line operators accounted for only one or two percent each. Just over half of businesses interviewed used more than one telecoms supplier, both fixed line and mobile or two fixed line suppliers. Businesses with more than one supplier tended to be larger and have higher telecoms spend. The majority of businesses were aware that, in general, competition existed but specific awareness of alternative suppliers is quite low – a fifth of respondents could not think of an alternative supplier who could supply all or most of the telecoms services available. It appears that satisfaction with current supplier is the most common reason for not changing supplier. BT Cellnet is the leading supplier in the mobile market with almost two fifths of businesses using this supplier. Vodafone follows closely behind with almost one-third of businesses.
Awareness of telecoms services This chapter examines the level of awareness the survey respondents had of the advanced telecoms services available to them. As a general overview, the first section of the chapter will examine awareness of these services amongst all the respondents in total, and comments will be made about these findings. Following this, awareness of the services will be examined amongst smaller sub groups of businesses. These will be examined in four key areas:
Where relevant, comparisons will be made with the findings from the 1997 survey conducted by IFF Research.
Table 2.1 overleaf shows the overall level of awareness of telecoms services amongst the respondents interviewed. There are two important points to make. The first point is that compared with the 1997 survey, levels of awareness are higher for nearly all services. There have been particularly noticeable increases in awareness of Personal Numbers, Flexible Billing, National Rate Numbers, Intranet and EDI, in addition to mobile related services such as Mobile Data and Mobile Short Message Services. The only service for which there has been no increase in awareness is Freephone numbers, although awareness in 1997 was very high (91%) so it might be expected that any increase from this would be quite gradual. The second point is that there is wide variation in the extent to which businesses are aware of the telecoms services available. Unsurprisingly, awareness of those services connected with the Internet (E-mail and Websites) was particularly high (around nine in ten respondents), a reflection no doubt of the increasingly important role such services play in business today. Other services with high levels of awareness included Caller Number Display, Voice Mail and Freephone numbers; again this is to be expected as these are relatively established services that respondents are likely to have encountered both in their business and domestic telecoms use. Those services with a lower level of awareness, for example the more specialist Data Network services are likely to only be applicable in certain business contexts and therefore not all respondents would have encountered them. Table 2.1: Overall awareness of advanced telecoms services Base: All respondents
The results from this survey indicate that the size of a business (in terms of the number of employees it has) impacts on awareness of the telecoms services available. Respondents from the smallest companies (fewer than 50 employees) were less likely to be aware of certain telecoms services than those from the largest companies (200+). The services that small companies were least likely to be aware of tended to be the more specialist services that are used in only certain business contexts – for example in multi-sited businesses. If a business does not need to use these services, it is probably unlikely they would have heard of them. Amongst the services that the great majority of respondents were familiar with, (for example the Internet and related services and Caller Number Display) levels of awareness did not vary greatly by business size. It is important to note that interviews were conducted with the person responsible for the telecoms services at that establishment. It is more likely that in a large business, where the telecoms requirements may be quite complex, there is normally a telecoms manager who is employed specifically to deal with the telecoms supply. This person is likely to have a good knowledge of the services available. In the small businesses, there may not be a person solely responsible for telecoms – the bill may be seen by one person and the equipment ordered by another person, and therefore it might be difficult to find a respondent who knows everything about the telecoms needs of the company. In addition it is likely that in small branches of larger companies, the telecoms decisions are taken by head office and the local staff will only have a basic knowledge of telecoms. For example, they may be aware of data network services, but not aware of a particular service such as Digital Leased Lines. An further example of this is with mobile services – whilst there is little variation between different sized businesses in terms of awareness of mobile phones, larger businesses demonstrated a higher awareness of mobile phone related services such as Mobile Data and Mobile Short Message Services. In addition, such people may have heard of a service, without having a full understanding of what that service is. Table 2.2 shows awareness of telecoms services amongst small, medium and large businesses. Table 2.2: Awareness of telecoms services – Business size Base: All respondents
In conclusion, there are differential levels of awareness according to business size – large businesses have higher levels of awareness of most telecoms services than small businesses. Only around two thirds of businesses were able or willing to specify a spend level for us and as one would expect, spend was closely related to organisation size, with only 4 small businesses being in the high/top spend category. In general, the findings of this study suggest that businesses with the high telecoms spend (over £25,000 per annum) are more aware of telecoms services than those with low spend (up to £1,000 p.a.). In every single case, those with medium spend levels have higher awareness than those with low spend levels and those with high levels have higher awareness again. However, even amongst those businesses spending over £25,000 each year on telecoms awareness of services such as X.25, Network ATM, Frame Relay or Variable Managed bandwidth was below half of respondents. Table 2.3 below and over the page shows the levels of awareness amongst businesses in the three categories of telecoms spend. Table 2.3: Awareness telecoms services – Telecoms spend Base: All respondents
All businesses were categorised into one of four business sectors, shown below:
The most important point to note is that for most of the telecoms services there is little difference in awareness between sectors. The survey sampling was designed to produce very similar proportions of large, medium and small businesses within each of these four categories. Thus any differences observed across sectors cannot be explained by ‘hidden’ size variations. However, for certain specified services there do exist some notable differences between business sectors. In terms of the more specialist data network services, businesses in the Finance/business services sectors, and the Manufacturing (etc.) sectors generally tended to have highest levels of awareness. Two factors go some way towards explaining this: firstly, businesses in the Manufacturing (etc.) and Finance/business services sectors tend to have high levels of telecoms spend and as has been stated earlier, the businesses with the highest telecoms spend are more aware of telecoms services overall. Secondly, it would not be surprising if many of those businesses we classify as Finance/Business services were more aware of telecoms services as they are likely to classify themselves as being in the ‘information industry’. The examples below and overleaf illustrate these differences in awareness:
Awareness of telecoms services – region The UK was subdivided into eight regions for the purposes of this study: Northern England, Midlands, South East England, London, South West England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland. Sampling on the survey was designed to produce similar mixes of businesses in each region in order that factors of size and sector were ‘neutralised’. Examining the findings from this survey across the regions did not reveal any great variations in levels of awareness. As within each region there will probably be a mix of business types in terms of size, telecoms spend and business sector, it is not surprising that the regional data does not reflect any strong trends. As was the case in 1997, awareness of advanced telecoms services varies greatly, ranging from over 90% (the Internet) to less than 20% (for example, for some of the data network services such as Frame Relay). The services with the broadest applicability across business size and sector are those with the highest levels of awareness, for example the Internet, Mobile phones and Voice Mail. Awareness was lowest amongst those services that had a narrower commercial applicability (for example data networking services). In addition, awareness was highest for those services that respondents may have encountered in their domestic telecoms use (Mobile phones, Caller Number Display, Voice Mail and Freephone numbers), or those with a generally high profile anyway (the Internet, E-mail and Websites being a good example of this). Awareness of telecoms services was highest amongst those companies with over 200 employees and those companies with the highest telecoms spend (over £25,000 each year). This is not particularly surprising: for companies with a large number of employees, telecoms services will be crucial to allow communication and the transfer of information between different people. Clearly, for companies with a high telecoms spend, it is likely that they are more dependent on a wider range of services, and this contributes to their telecoms bill. Region did not appear to impact on awareness of telecoms services, and differences by business sector were confined to the more specialist services. Where differences did occur, the Manufacturing and Finance/business services sectors tended to be most familiar with telecoms services. In comparison with the 1997 survey, awareness of telecoms services has increased for all but one of the services in this survey. Those services where awareness has increased in particular are those with medium levels of awareness (around a quarter to a half of all businesses interviewed) in 1997, such as Flexible Billing, Personal Numbers, Mobile Short Message Services, National Rate Numbers, Intranets and Mobile Data.
Usage of Advanced Telecoms services
This chapter covers levels of usage of the telecoms services discussed in Chapter 2. It will examine usage of telecoms services overall, and by the four types of subgroups identified (Business size, telecoms spend, Business Sector and Region) and the suppliers of telecoms services used. Comparisons with the results from the 1997 survey will be made where appropriate. There are two important points to make about overall usage of telecoms services. The first is that, as with awareness, there is wide variation in the proportion of businesses overall who use these services. Certain services (the Internet, Mobile Phones) were used by more than half of all respondents. Others were only used by one or two per cent of all businesses in this survey (Network ATM, X.25). This is not particularly surprising as certain services have specialist uses that are not applicable to all businesses. However, even those services with a more general applicability (and having fairly high levels of awareness), such as Caller Number Display, Voice Mail, and Flexible Billing options are only used by a minority of businesses. The second point is that compared with the 1997 survey, usage of advanced telecoms services has increased quite significantly, for certain services. For no service has usage declined and there are several areas where the increase has been particularly dramatic. The Internet is now used by over half of businesses, compared with only a third in 1997 (54% compared with 34%). Voice Mail (from 17% to 36%) and Caller Number Display (from 15% to 39%) are also much more widely used than before. As there is no information from the previous survey about the extent of mobile phone use, it would not be possible to surmise whether this increase would be linked to increasing mobile phone usage or is linked to fixed line services. Those services where the increase in usage has been small, are those that are concentrated in particular business contexts and those that are only used by a small minority of businesses anyway – for example data network services. The increases noted above demonstrate the rapid changes that have occurred in the business telecoms market in recent years and the important role that these telecoms now play in business today. The figures that have been commented on in the previous section can be seen in more detail on Table 3.1.1. Table 3.1.1: Usage of advanced telecoms services (all respondents) Base: All respondents
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