Ask the Director: How can we make your life even better connected?

[Abs]

Hi Everyone,

Ever wonder if you could ask a question or forward an idea directly to a person who is involved in making top decisions for our company? Well, here's that wonderful opportunity for you!

On Tuesday, we’re conducting our first ever Virtual Interview event on the O2 Community that will be hosted by our Sales & Service director. He will be responding to your questions and taking any feedback/ suggestion on this thread between 16:00 – 17:30. So, get your thinking caps on!

How can we make your life even better connected: what are the products, services and experiences we can either improve or introduce?

NOTE: The thread is now closed and we'd like to thank everyone for posting their questions and feedback.

Thanks

Abs

[Anonymous]

Bring back using 4 texts for MMS from text allowance instead of charging 35p per MMS picture.

I find this extremely inconvenient and having been an O2 customer for over 10 years, I made the mistake of signing up this current contract for 2 years but I shan't be renewing it when the 2 years are up.

[Anonymous]

I'm a fairly big Microsoft fan. I was a previous user of Windows Mobile which O2 supported pretty well with the XDA devices.

Roll forward to Windows Phone and I feel like a third class citizen on O2. The My O2 app is nothing more than a WAP URL redirect and the view my data usage feature doesn't even work. The range of WP7 handsets available is poor. I ended up buying a SIM free phone and dropping from £45 a month to £11 on Simplicity as a result.

Most importantly for me though is the lack of Visual Voicemail. The feature is supported by yourselves on iPhone and has been supported on Windows Phone since the Mango release but everytime I tweet @O2UK to ask about it I am basically shunned into the corner to go away. The Microsoft implementation of Visual Voicemail is the same as Apples, so it's just a case of enabling it for a couple of new Device IDs - I don't see what the problem is.

Lastly, with Windows Phone 7.8 update on the horizon and Windows Phone 8 too, I am concerned about how long O2 will withhold the update as they did with Mango and how lacklustre the availability of new WP8 hardware will be in your network.

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:
 Also, would you consider delivery reports for messages. I am lost without them.

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Try *0# in front of a text, and you should get a report.

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone - I'm Feilim Mackle, O2's Sales and Service Director. I'm just about to start answering your questions - if you haven't asked yours yet don't worry, get it in shortly and I'll do my best to answer as many of them as I possibly can!

[Anonymous]

Improve 3G coverage in rural areas

I live in a reletively small village on the outskirts of Norwich, and get 100% 2G signal, however this is useless data-wise when I'm not at home covered by wifi.

But what I also find odd is often when I am in the very centre of the city, I have 2G signal rather than 3G, yet in relefction, in Newcastle I get 100% 3G coverage everywhere -- even underground on the Metro!

Why is Norfolk always left as some kind of after-though? And I was under the impression that one of the conditions of 4G licencing from Ofcom was to first improve 3G coverage in rural areas?

[Anonymous]

An second comment if I may is that femtocells are a must.

Sure, they are second to network upgrades and investment but if having the customer by a £20 box to bridge the macro cell deficiencies and in return the customer gets perfect HSDPA coverage in their home, increasing battery life due to reduced cell roaming attempts and reduced mobile data usage due to home data usage being channelled through the in-home internet connection, then its a good compromise.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I think O2's data network has to get better as you are one of the big 2 networks in the UK.  Your oposition have way better 3G networks than you do.  As soon as you see a green feild you go down to GPRS or EDGE and in 2012 that is just not good enough!

Also charging £10 for the max of 1GB data is again not good enough other networks are offering unlimted internet for the same price as your tariffs so O2 customers are getting a raw deal.  Smartphones are now the norm yet your phone grinds to a hault when your data runs out and nothing at all loads at 15kbps! 

To me its data amout and coverage that are the main flaws in 2012 we should not be so far behind the rest of the networks.

On the plus side you have to keep UK call centres.

[Anonymous]

I can't believe how difficult it is to top up a new pay and go sim card. Or how difficult it is to get support on resolving it. I have had 2 sim cards and when trying to top either on 4444 or online I always get error messages. How on earth can you expect customers to join and stay with you if its so difficult to use the service.

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael - connectivity and access to data has now become a fundamental part of everyday life. Each and every customer uses both different amounts of data and for different purposes. 97% of our customers use less than 500MB of data per month - one of the challenges of unlimited and unmanaged data is that the usage of the few can affect the experience of many others.

We have created data tariffs with different data limits to appeal to as many customers as possible but recognise that some customers have high data requirements - that's why we've invested in O2 Wifi to provide the best possible Wi-Fi experience in places like Costa Coffee, McDonalds and top tourist locations across London.

Do you find you use Wi-Fi when you're out and about?

[Anonymous]

Hi Gazza - we're not rolling out fibre for broadband customers this year. We're really proud of O2 Broadband including its recent Which? award which recognised the great work done by all of the guys in Customer Service.

Around our network, we're continuing to invest over £1m a day in our network. You may also have noticed the press writing about our proposed network collaboration with Vodafone: http://news.o2.co.uk/Press-Releases/Telef%c3%b3nica-UK-and-Vodafone-UK-to-strengthen-their-network-c...