More than one third of millennials – young people reaching adulthood in the 21st century - interviewed in a four country survey say that in five years’ time they will choose mobile services offered through a traditional carrier.
This is one of the findings of a research study on the digital opinions of almost 1000 millenials in Australia, Brazil, the UK and the US conducted by BSS solutions provider CSG International, and released at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
According to the research, 35% of respondents say they expect they will choose traditional carriers in 2022, while a lesser 33% believe they will choose a non-traditional player such as Google, Amazon, or a company yet to be identified.
“So much of the industry talk is about the move away from traditional carriers to new entrants,” says CSG’s Ian Watterson.
“The research gives encouragement to carriers that there is loyalty there from millennials, which is something of a surprise.”
Watterson said CSG had conducted the study because the telecoms industry was continually anticipating the digital consumption patterns and tastes of millennials, and yet there was a lack of detailed research on this.
Asking respondents to look five years into the future also gave some indication on where the industry might be heading.
In other findings, the industry move to personal assistants was validated, with 53% of respondents saying they would pay more for a mobile service which included an assistant.
49% of millennials say they will want their mobile phone service to become a more intuitive personal assistant with the ability to anticipate needs and take actions, such as automatically checking-in a for a flight, 24-hours before flight time
The survey also showed a clear willingness to give providers access to providers if that resulted in more personalised services.
More than seven out of ten millennials said they were likely to provide their data in exchange for personalised recommendations on entertainment services and small conveniences.
In good news for telco revenues, 59% of millennials are likely to spend more for a service specifically customized to their usage patterns across voice, data, entertainment and other personalized services.