LNP: Wireless faces the quality challenge

For wireless carriers, the FCC’s wireline-to-wireless portability ruling is probably most appropriately filed under the heading “Things to be careful about wishing for--because you just might get them.”

Though the major wireless carriers have spent a lot of energy fighting for wireline-to-wireless porting while fighting against wireless-to-wireless porting, it’s doubtful they fully grasp the challenge just handed to them by the FCC. Wireline service carries an assumption of quality of service that wireless never has had to face.

“What happens during the next blackout?” asked David Berry, vice president and chief technology officer at Synchronoss. “During the next two years, it will seem very enticing to go completely wireless, but earlier this year, with the blackout in New York, you couldn’t use wireless service. When the next serious blackout happens, people could cut back to wireline.” AMS vice president Dave Meredith added, “Both wireline and wireless have advantages, and wireline has the quality.”

Most industry watchers agree that wireless carriers will need to start marketing wireless as a quality service, but will have to improve indoor coverage and overall network management to do it. A few wireless carriers are already trying to compete on the basis of quality to some degree. Berry pointed out that Sprint, the company that used to advertise wireline quality “good enough to hear a pin drop,” is now advertising superior wireless coverage in commercials in which people are throwing away competitors’ phones because they can’t get signals. “There could be new dollars spent on infrastructure and new dollars spent on marketing plans to prove quality,” he said.

Meanwhile, lack of wireless quality certainly hasn’t been a deterrent to the growing number of wireline customers that already have cut the cord prior to portability. As that cord-cutting increases, is it possible that quality actually could lose its luster as a decisive factor in the purchasing of telecom services?

PriMetrica, in partnership with Ernst & Young, conducted a survey of 700 U.S. households earlier this year to gauge their willingness to switch from separate services to a single family-share wireless plan of 600 anytime minutes for about $50 per month. The study found that between 42% and 58% of U.S. households would be likely to switch at that plan price, said Kevin Duffy-Deno, director of analytical services at PriMetrica.

However, the study also assumes wireless quality not to be a negative deterrent. “We asked these households to assume the best-case scenario, that wireless offered comparable household coverage and quality of service,” he said. “This is not going to happen tomorrow, but we think that carriers could invest more in infrastructure where they need to and start looking into selling these kinds of family plans.”