Last week, Japan’s Ministry of Home Affairs announced the results of a public survey they undertook on Japan’s telecoms industry. The ministry is playing a large role in the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) to Japan this autumn, and, unsurprisingly, there were several questions aimed to gauge the public’s views on changing operators.

When asked whether they wanted to change carriers, 23% of respondents said that they did, with the top factors cited for choosing operator being discount plans (39.9%), coverage (39.2%) and data transmission charges (28.5%).

More interestingly, when asked what factors put them off moving networks, the fact that it was a nuisance to change number was not the top reason, coming in second place with 25.1%. The top answer with 34% of responses was that subscribers wanted to keep on using their family plans and contract-length related loyalty discounts. It still surprises me that such schemes are not used more often by operators outside of Japan as a method of reducing churn.

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 9:39 am