Today's top story: People dig prepaid

The study, now in its second year, measures customer satisfaction with current prepaid wireless service across seven key dimensions (in order of importance): call quality (24%); company image (19%); cost of service (17%); account management (15%); initial activation (11%); service plan options (8%); and customer service (6%).

The survey is based on a 1,000-point scale; prepaid services rose 10 points from 2006 to 2007, which is a significant step forward. The biggest area of improvement: cost of service, which rose 21 points from last year. That’s a point we’ve been trying to hammer home since we started this here blog. There are enough options with prepaid that you can create a plan that is affordable. Call quality also improved dramatically, rising 14 points from last year. What we’re wondering is if this represents an overall improvement across the telecommunications industry, or a mostly-prepaid thing, with regional carriers improving service during the year. Either way, though, it’s another gain for prepaid. A couple other interesting figures: prepaid users spend an average of $38 when they top up, and the average monthly cost is $71 per month. Prepaid users also use fewer minutes than the postpaid variety…less than half: 218 to 528. Which company came out on top in customer service? Virgin Mobile. We must respectfully disagree, though. See, Virgin has this voice-activated phone menu, which is easily the most annoying call feature ever. It takes forever to navigate it and actually get a live person on the line. In that department, we’d vote T-Mobile best. When we have a question, we never have a problem reaching a life rep, and our question is usually answered fully. Here’s to a great 2007 to 2008, prepaid. [DMN Newswire]]]>