Expatriates are more aware than the Maltese of their monthly expenditure on the mobile telephony services, research by the Malta Communications Authority (MCA) has found.
Expat market research showed that just 5.6% of expat respondents did not now their monthly expenditure on the mobile telephony service, much less than the 17% of Maltese users identified by the latest market research focusing on Maltese users.
In addition, expat users were bigger spenders on mobile telephony, more likely a result of a bigger dependence on mobile telephony services such as mobile data usage.
Around 33% of expat respondents said they spent €20 to €49.99 per month on the mobile telephony service (compared with 23% of Maltese users) and an additional 14% said they spend €50 or more per month (compared with 4.7% of Maltese users).
The study, carried out by the National Statistics Office, was commissioned by the MCA in 2019 and looked at a range of factors including product choices, expenditure, and quality of service.
A total 503 expats were surveyed by means of Computer Assisted Telephone Interview between December 2019 and January 2020.
The survey was carried out before the UK formally exiting the EU and 41% of all EU expats surveyed are from the UK.
Mobile telephony subscription
Nearly all - 95.3% - of all expats have a mobile telephony subscription with local service providers.
On a more disaggregate level, 87.7% of expats say they only have a mobile telephony subscription with local service providers; 7.6% say they have a mobile telephony subscription with a service provider located in another country alongside a subscription with a local service provider; and 0.6% say they only have a subscription with a service provider located in another country. 4.2% of respondents say they have no mobile telephony subscription.
Just over half - 53.4% - of all expats in Malta have a pre-paid plan, while the rest have a post-paid plan, with the latter type of plan typically subject to a two-year contract term agreement.
Significantly, slightly more than half of those with a post-paid subscription say they purchase the service in a bundle alongside other telecom services.
In this regard, product preferences for the expat community are pretty much similar to those displayed by the Maltese community.
Three fourths - 74% - of all survey respondents say they are satisfied (47.8%) to very satisfied (26.3%) with the quality of service offered by local service providers.
This is less than the 95% satisfaction level expressed by Maltese respondents to the latest MCA mobile telephony perceptions survey. The reasons for this gap in response may be several, including that expats may have a far wider experience with different service providers and thus be in a better position to evaluate quality of service.
Also, it is not always easy to adjust to a new environment and to fully comprehend the factors that may at times limit quality outcomes, such as in the case of low reception in older Maltese buildings.
Fault resolution
A total 62% of expat survey respondents chose to reply to the question concerning fault resolution, indicating that at some point they had an issue or a fault to report to local service providers. Around two thirds of these were ‘satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’ with how local service providers addressed their concerns.
However, 15% were not satisfied with the response they received and a further 16% replied they felt ‘indifferent’ to qualify the response by local service providers.
Mobile voice calling and Over-the-top (OTT) voice calling is used 89% of all expat respondents. This suggests that just around 9% of expats do not use mobile data.
Of note is that the latest market research focusing on the Maltese community showed that 45% of respondents used OTT-based services.
Usage of OTT services by expats in Malta is predominantly for chatting and voice activities, with around 73% of expat respondents qualifying these services as being ‘very often’ (at 39%) or ‘always’ (at 34%) substitutable with standard mobile and messaging services.