India mobile services domain continues to face spectrum crunch for the past so many years now. To compound to the problem the entry of new operators have further made the spectrum crunch pinch more severely. Call drops have become a normal phenomenon and poor network coverage in some areas even in the city limits leave the subscribers in cold particularly for voice services.

But even under such circumstances, there is still immense scope for operators to work about a differentiation in terms of data network performance, reveals a new survey by Nielsen’s Consumer Experience Mobile Test program.

As per the survey, there is wide gap in data network performance between the market leader and market average paving the way for differentiation in terms of data network performance particularly in Tier 1 markets.

The study also highlights that over one-third of new CDMA subscribers (acquired in last 6 months) are ready to switchover to GSM network with the belief that GSM delivers better network and price. However for records, CDMA platform emerged to have distinct advantages over GSM as per Nielson study with CDMA ranking ahead in all six data network performance metrics in 7 out of 8 metros under observation.

Nielson’s phase 1 study covered 39 markets and the second phase is scheduled to commence soon to provide more in depth insights.