4G services have been in commercial business for a year in China, HCR conducted a 4G user experience survey of about 600 participants in PT/EXPO COMM China 2014, according to the results, over 70% of the customers choose 4G services of China Mobile, less than 30% choose China Unicom and China Telecom is less than 10%.
As the investigation shows, subscribers evaluated 4G service experiences as just ordinary, while the tariff is got the lowest score; for subscribers who don’t use 4G, the high-speed network and preferential prices have a certain attraction to them, which is considered the entry point for introduction of subscribers for operators in early stages.
For the rise and development of 4G market, customers think that the market competition of operators and demand of data services from customers are the main driving force, which co-promotes the rapid development of 4G market.
In terms of the operators, market competition in 3G era changed the dominant situation of China Mobile, but the development of 4G technology provided an opportunity for China Mobile to turn around the situation, with the propelling of China Mobile and layout of China Unicom and China Telecom in 4G, the three major operators will return to the same starting line, finally the structure of telecom industry will be remodeled; from the subscribers, higher demands are put forward in speed, quality and resolution, while the characteristics of fast transmission speed, good quality and high resolution of 4G can meet the their requirements, which can contribute to the upgrade from 3G to 4G in a certain degree.
Subscribers are very rational on the layouts and big moves of the three major operators in 4G market, they believe that 3G market won’t be replaced by 4G in the next three years, but co-exist as two different services, but 3G will gradually fade out with the development of 4G; for different operators, customers believe that the fade out of 3G services in China Mobile will be much faster than China Unicom and China Telecom in the next three years, and 4G services of China Mobile will be most popular.
Compared to the survey that HCR conducted in PT/EXPO COMM China 2013, which is also the eve of releasing 4G licenses, customers believed that TDD-LTE would be more suitable for 4G market development, but after one year commercial operation of 4G, this view has changed, the TDD+FDD integration of networking is regarded as the trend of 4G model in the future development.