Evaluation of customer satisfaction among international students using Vodafone in Australia

This literature review evaluates the effectiveness of Vodafone's service and offers among international students in Australia. It discusses the telecommunication sector in Australia, Vodafone's services, long-term strategic planning, impact on customers, and problems faced by Vodafone.

Running Head: MARKETING
Evaluation of customer satisfaction among the
International students using Vodafone in Australia
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Telecommunication Sector..............................................................................................................3
Telecommunication Sector in Australia..........................................................................................4
Vodafone in Australia......................................................................................................................5
Kind of Service provided by Vodafone...........................................................................................5
Long term Strategic Planning of Vodafone in Australia.................................................................6
Impact of the planning on the customers.........................................................................................7
Problems faced by Vodafone regarding the changing wants and needs of International Students. 8
Summary of the Chapter..................................................................................................................8
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Literature Review
Introduction
Telecommunication sector has been facing a number of issues in the global market. These
issues are posing grave challenges to the organizations providing telecommunication services.
The increase in the number of the competitors providing the telecommunication services and the
number of offers that these companies are offering have changed the total scenario of the
telecommunications world. The following review has dealt with the Telecommunication giant
Vodafone and has studied the effectiveness of their service and their offers amongst the number
of international students staying in Australia.
Telecommunication Sector
The telecommunications industry falls within the information and communication
technology is generally made up of all the different telecommunications companies and the
internet service providers. The telecommunications industry in the modern days plays an
important role as telecommunications has become the primary means of communication in the
modern world. Apart from the telephone calls, there has been a rise in the networking
technologies that has helped the organizations to provide different kinds of services including the
internet service to the users (Abushova Burova and Suloeva 2016). Telecom industry generally
consists of Voice calls, messaging, e-mails, and video calling. Apart from this the new services
includes the likes of high speed broadband services, interactive entertainment services, digital
subscriber lines as well as different kinds of value added services. The Value added services are
said to provide the largest service growths over the different kinds of global networks.

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Telecommunication Sector in Australia
The Australian Telecoms market is generally divided into markets for landline services
and markets for mobile services. Both the cases covers the voice and data services. The relevant
key regulatory bodies are generally the department of Communication and the Arts and the
Australian Communications and Media Authority along with the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission. Telstra and Optus are the two companies of the country that provides
landline services to the users (Abushova Burova and Suloeva 2016). While Telstra is a retail
landline service provider its counterpart, Optus is a wholesale landline service provider. The
landline market has seen a wide transformation in the last few years after the establishment of
NBN Company Limited by the Government of Australia. The Company is liable for designing,
building, operating high speed cable and broadband networks across the island continent and
being a government enterprise has been able to lure a considerable portion of the customers
towards them. Further, the government also introduced the ‘Telecommunications Reform
Package’ to Parliament on June 22 2017, which, among other things, makes NBN the default
infrastructure provider of last resort, clarifies certain wholesale-only rules applying to high-speed
broadband networks, and establishes a scheme intended to ensure long-term sustainable funding
arrangements for broadband services to regional areas.
On the other hand there are companies like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and TPG for
providing mobile services across the island continent. These companies own mobile spectrum
provided by the Government of Australia. These companies also provide internet services to the
users. The companies have recently seen a rise in their market share as because there has been a
recent trend where people are moving in into a mobile only service, where they call, text, mail

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and use internet from their handsets only. This helps the different companies of the country to
easily operate and earn revenue.
Vodafone in Australia
Vodafone Australia or Vodafone Hutchison Australia is one of the most prominent
mobile telecommunications company and Internet service provider of Australia. The Company is
the 3rd largest Mobile Service Provider of Australia having more than 6 million subscribers and
an annual revenue of $3.8billion (vodafone.com 2019). The company currently enjoys a 19%
market share which is a healthy figure and aims to be the number one in the coming days.
Currently the company provides 3G and 4G services to its users with a limit of 900MHZ for 3G
users and a limit of 1800MHZ for 4G users of the company.
Kind of Service provided by Vodafone
Apart from the local products and services that are provided to the locals as well as the
international students and other migrants, there are a number of other services that are provided
by Vodafone to this range of customers. The most important and perhaps the biggest product that
the management of Vodafone offers to the students is the scheme “Travelling with Vodafone-
$5”. Generally taking a Smartphone with himself can end up being too much expensive for a
student to afford (Amin et al. 2017). The traditional travel SIMs or a local SIM can ease out the
problems or the damage done to the wallet,, Vodafone’s $5 Roaming is one of the most simplest
options for the needs of the international data. The company has designed it and named it in
such a manner that it is totally in line with the name. The Vodafone $5 roaming means that for an
extra $5 per day a person can use the Australian plan inclusions in the selected countries. This
means that one can easily make calls, send text messages, use data and also use other value

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added services provided by Vodafone, Australia from the country itself (vodafone.com 2019).
This plan has been introduced especially for the students who come in large numbers by taking
admission in Australian colleges from different other countries.
The $5 fee is charged for those days only on when the student or some other persons
using an international SIM of Vodafone wishes to include these services in his plan. No amount
will be charged in case of a flight mode or mooching off public Wi-Fi. However, any use of
network locally will invite an extra charge of $5 against such a use (vodafone.com 2019). The
activation of the roaming mode generally lasts for around 24 hours and thus if a student includes
the services of the $5 on 10AM, Sunday, the service will last for an exact time of 24 hours and
will end on 10AM on the next day on Monday. The following service has been one of the largest
hit services among the international students as they have expressed and gave positive feedbacks
of the following services.
Long term Strategic Planning of Vodafone in Australia
The main goal of Vodafone, Australia is to ensure the growth of Vodafone in Australia
and be the leader in telecommunication industry. The Vodafone Australia group has been able to
meet a number of pre planned goals and have aimed to achieve even more in the coming years.
The group has been able to deliver a number of different financial and operational targets and
have prepared a detailed strategy that aims to achieve its objectives in an effective manner. The
strategic objectives of the organization in Australia include the likes of establishing commercial
solutions for the professional services by means of ensuring a better and developed
communication (vodafone.com 2019). The communication tools presently being used by
Vodafone in Australia are bound to be changed in accordance with the passage of time and the

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management aims to deliver 5G services in the country by the end of 2022. Apart from this
another major aim of the organization is to search for opportunities to reduce the international
call rates and introduce more user friendly schemes for the international students. The company
plans to take advantage of the success of the $5 roaming scheme and implement more features in
it. This includes the likes of including more and more countries into the scheme especially the
large majority of South East Asian countries and a number of different African countries. This is
because a large number of students coming to Australia come from the countries located in these
parts of the world.
Impact of the planning on the customers
According to, Bhatti Abareshi and Pittayachawan (2016) the strategic planning of
Vodafone can have a huge impact on the international customers using Vodafone in Australia.
The impact will be especially huge on that of the international students who resides in Australia
and study there. The customers often rely on the intangible and interactive nature of the services
given by the employees of Vodafone and also the level of user friendliness of the schemes
introduced by the company. The decision of the organization to provide more better and
organized services and transform the $5 services for the international students is one of the
positives for the students. The long term planning has promised a development in the
communication which will also see a fall in the prices of different international schemes. The fall
in the prices of the different kind of such schemes will be a welcome for the international
students as in such a case they will be able to stay connected with the people and make easy and
smooth communication with their friends and family in the home country. As the company will
slowly include a number of other countries in the $5 planning, the company will be able to get
more and more customers for the same plan.

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Problems faced by Vodafone regarding the changing wants and needs of International
Students
Each and every of the companies faces different kinds of problems regarding the
changing wants and needs of the customers. Vodafone generally faces a number of issues from
the changing demand of the international customers. There has been complains from a large
section of the international customers about the poor quality of network provided by Vodafone
and most of the time these customers are unable to communicate with their loved ones in a
proper and effective manner (Abushova Burova and Suloeva 2016). The complains have
although been rejected by the organization, a lot more can be expected from the management of
the company in these regards. Apart from this the organization has also been charged from a vast
majority of international students of charging more than the normal amount at the slightest of
pretexts. There has been regular complains on the same from a multitude of international
customers. The basic demands of the customers generally are that they expect the organization to
provide them a clear and uninterrupted service and change their network capability.
Summary of the Chapter
The following review has provided a proper picture of telecommunications and its current
state in Australia. The following literature review starts with the definition of
telecommunications and explains the telecom sector that is present in Australia. The review
proceeds with the discussion of Vodafone in Australia and the services provided by Vodafone in
Australia. The review has also shown the different kinds of the strategic planning of Vodafone to
be implemented and the impact of the strategy on the international customers. The review ends
with a short description of the problems faced by Vodafone from the changing demands of the
international customers.

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Reference
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