Value is What the Customer Says It Is

Value, in the end, is what a customer says it is.

With all of the marketing hype now underway in the U.S. mobile market, you might think any of the four largest U.S. mobile service providers have a lead on some metric deemed important to customers.

And with the caveat that end user perception of value includes both performance (or “quality” proxies of various types) and price, plus other terms and conditions (bundle offers, discounts, contracts, usage limits, exemptions from usage charges for entertainment video, device availability), customers keep saying that Verizon has the best network, while other networks have less consistent performance.

All marketing hype aside, Verizon customers across the United States consistently say they have fewer network problems, according to J.D. Power.

Performance by other tier-one providers varies by region.

In the Northeast and West regions, AT&T scores worse than all the others. In the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, North Central and Southwest regions, T-Mobile US scores the worse. Sprint is not at the top, or at the bottom, in any region.

But Sprint finished number two in the Southwest and West regions.

Customers, rightly or wrongly, keep saying Verizon has the best network.