Critical Success Factors for 4G LTE Launching in Taiwan: A Study on Customers' Expectations

LTE- Long Term Evolution, marketed as 4G LTE, is a new generation of mobile-phone network which enable the mobile operator to provide significantly faster mobile broadband data rates. With the new redesign and simplification of the network architecture, 4G LTE can provide five time faster data rates than the current 3G networks. It will help the mobile operators to cope with ever growing mobile data traffic demands in a cost-effective manner. In Taiwan, the licenses for 4G LTE will be issued by the end of 2013, opening another business opportunities for the mobile industry. It’s expected that all the big mobile operators will acquire for the licenses. Telecom equipment vendor such as Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson are preparing for 4G LTE network trial and deployment as well. In light of the upcoming 4G LTE deployment in Taiwan, this thesis project was conduct to gain a better understanding of the current mobile users in Taiwan. The goal is to identify and understand customers’ attitudes, preferences, and satisfactions towards the current mobile carriers as well as customers’ expectations of the next generation carrier – 4G LTE. The data input of this thesis are survey data collected by on-line questionnaire from the students at National ChengChi University, and people living in Taiwan. The sample size was 872. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS, a computerized statistical program. The analysis report includes description of the sample, customers’ attitudes, and preferences of the current mobile carriers in general, satisfactions towards their current using carriers, expectations of 4G LTE carriers as well as their preferable carriers. The report also discusses the carrier switching pattern, and the factors influencing the switching behavior. After analyzing the findings of the study, the thesis report proposes that the mobile operators should deploy 4G LTE network coverage as soon as possible, concentrate on increasing mobile data service speed, maintain voice call service quality, offer a wide variety of handsets at some attractive prices and setting tariff rate competitively