Roy Morgan’s ‘Mobile Phone Monitor’ found that customers are the most satisfied with the service offered by Virgin Mobile.

Using data from the first six months of the year (until June 2010), 78.8% of Virgin Mobile’s customers were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ satisfied with their overall service. This was followed by Vodafone (73.9%), 3 (73.5%) and Optus (72.2%).

Telstra scored a 61.7% satisfaction rate, making it the only service provider performing under the industry average of 68.7%.

Andrew Braun, director of mobile, internet and technology at Roy Morgan, said of Telstra’s result: “Roy Morgan Research data shows that Telstra wins mobile customers based on its better network coverage, bundled packages, business phone deals and wider international roaming. However this does not seem to be enough to drive a competitive level of customer satisfaction.”

Braun cautioned that each service provider has a different customer base with different needs and expectations, so broad stereotypes should be avoided.