Products and services: New competitive pressure in the telecommunications market

Many companies have changed their telecommunications provider several times in recent years. This is shown in our current study "Change of perspective among network operators". In it, we shed light on how companies evaluate the service and product offering of their network provider. For this purpose, we asked almost 175 companies how they assess their telecommunications provider and what their wishes are.

A central finding of our survey: The willingness of many companies to switch is putting pressure on German telecommunications providers in the B2B sector. The increasing competitive pressure requires network operators to keep up with the times with their range of services. This is because many companies are willing to switch to the corresponding specialist providers for special applications and more individual solutions such as SD-WAN, cloud & hosting solutions.

According to our survey, most companies are mostly satisfied with their current telecommunications providers. In the area of competence, for example, 68 percent of respondents said they were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with their provider. A good value. But it also shows that for about one third of the respondents there is still room for improvement. The values in the areas of value for money (65 percent) and customer service (63 percent) are similar.

The choice of network operator is a strategic decision for many companies and is made on the basis of various criteria. The most important are: Product and service quality, trust in the provider and data protection issues. The classic providers are still ahead, especially in the area of product quality. Large companies therefore most often opt for Deutsche Telekom or Vodafone. Smaller companies, on the other hand, rate the product quality of network operators such as O2 and 1&1 as very good.

Our survey shows that the large providers have an edge over smaller providers in their core business areas - internet, mobile telephony, telephone. But new players in the market are catching up. For example, pure internet providers who have now expanded their portfolio. This competitive pressure is also increasing the willingness of many companies to switch. More than a quarter (26 percent) have changed network providers twice, 21 percent three times and ten percent four times in the past 20 years. Especially among smaller companies, the willingness to switch is high. The most important reason for switching providers is product quality, cited by 66 percent. By comparison, cost reasons are only a reason for switching for 44 percent of respondents.

A large proportion of the companies we surveyed are satisfied with their network operators. But the increasing requests to switch and the great willingness to approach other companies clearly show that the telecommunications providers should keep their product portfolio up-to-date. Especially in the area of emerging technologies, the cards are being reshuffled in the industry. Here, specialised providers are pushing into the market that can better satisfy the desire of many companies for more individual solutions.