Vodafone is the most admired mobile services brand

Vodafone has been recognised as the most admired mobile service brand online in India followed by Tata Indicom and Aircel, a survey said.

A pan-India survey conducted by Drizzlin Media, a Branding 2.0 consultancy that audited over 1,600 relevant conversations of the 7,000 conversations' sampled around India's top 10 telecom brands shows that Reliance Mobile emerged as the least admired brand.

The survey was conducted over ten telecom brands including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Tata Indicom, Aircel, Reliance, BSNL, MTNL, Spice and Loop Mobile.

The conversations were spread over various online venues and included blogs, forums, micro blogs such as Twitter, social networks such as Facebook and Orkut, YouTube and Mouthshut.com, a consumer review site.

Each of the conversations was valued on its tonality-either positive or negative. The top telecom brands were then graded and ranked according to online popularity to derive 'The most admired mobile service brand online'.

BSNL mobile's products and services were the most admired online while Vodafone appeared at the bottom of the stack. Vodafone's advertisements and promotions were the most admired online and BSNL mobile services were the least admired, the survey said.

MTNL mobile services scored the highest in customer service rankings, while Vodafone was rated the worst with
netizens. Tata Indicom's network coverage was the most admired, while Loop Mobile's was the least admired, it said.

BSNL mobile was the most favoured when it came to tariffs and billing while Airtel scored the least. Tata Indicom ranked the highest in brand affinity whereas Aircel lagged behind, the survey said.

Most telecom companies have a limited engagement with their customers online. Telecom companies that do use social
networking sites use the mediums, more as a promotional tool rather than an engagement platform, it said.

"We chose to analyse the buzz around telecom companies in India as the first of our surveys since telecom is a
consumer intensive industry," Drizzlin's chief executive officer, Deepak Goel said.

"Since the industry is so competitive, it becomes essential for telecom companies in India to understand what their consumers say about them online as it directly impacts subscriber numbers, reputation and revenues," Goel said.