Paying for quality
So O2 is banking on the ever-greater online needs of the market leading to an increasing appreciation of quality and it may be on to something there. If downloading an HD video takes forever or is often aborted due to a dropped connection, you’re soon going to see the value in paying for quality.
But delivering quality is easier said than done. We ask Wilkins how O2 has gone about this strategy. “It’s about how we turn our customers into fans,” he says. “Last year our internal targets were based primarily on customer satisfaction. Our objective is to provide the best experience. We don’t necessarily claim to be the cheapest but we will offer the best overall quality of service.”
"Last year our internal targets were based primarily on customer satisfaction."O2’s latest deal costs £20 per month for mobile broadband with 3GB per month of data download thrown in, after which you pay 20p per MB. It’s an 18 month contract and includes a year’s domestic broadband connection, which otherwise costs £7.50 per month for existing O2 customers and £12.50 for non-customers, for free.
There isn’t a download limit on the home broadband, but there is an ‘excessive use’ policy. “There we’re just looking for a usage spike that is negatively impacting other users. I’m not aware of a single time it has come into effect,” assures Wilkins.
To date, O2 doesn’t seem to have been sucked into the peer-to-peer downloading debate, in which ISPs are stuck between the rock of the litigious music industry and the hard place of the bureaucracy happy government. “We’re waiting for the outcome of the government report before acting on the peer-to-peer issue,” says Wilkins.
