Empirical Study of Users Acceptance Factors for 4G Service: In Context of Indonesia

Abstract

Since the previous third-generation (3G) technology for broadband networks, fourth-generation (4G) broadband technology has been globally adopted with LTE as the accepted standard. While the rate of adoption of 4G broadband has been high, Indonesia, a developing country, commenced implementation of the technology at the end of 2014. There are a number of benefits entailed by the adoption of 4G broadband, such as reducing the digital divide, supporting mobile leapfrogging for rural areas in Indonesia, and emphasizing the urgency of the development of the broadband network throughout the country. The emergence of 4G LTE could be the solution to achieve these goals by providing network availability throughout the archipelagos of Indonesia and to realize the long-term Indonesian Broadband Plan for 2019. To increase the growth of this technology, both providers and the government need to boost the acceptance of 4G LTE to achieve maturation. To this end, this study attempts to understand the determinants of acceptance of 4G LTE broadband services for Indonesian mobile users. A survey was conducted with members of the Indonesian population from different regions. An analysis was conducted by structural equation modeling with the control variables of age, gender, region, experience on 3G, and usage pattern, which acted as moderators affecting the weight of significance influence on behavioral intention from the main variables adopted with the base theory of UTAUT, in addition with a contract- based pricing scheme and trialability. The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, contract- based pricing scheme, and trialability yielded positive significant results regarding behavioral intention, and the facilitating condition did not have a significance influence. Different control variables of age and experience on 3G as moderators also showed significant discrepancies among relationships of the main variables to behavioral intention. Lastly, the usage intention demonstrated a positive notable effect on actual usage. The results proved that the importance of comparable benefit from the service with importance of education should exist with the utilization of social channels. Building 4G services as a multi-sided platform with offerings including trialability and ensuring the success of a contract-based pricing scheme are suggested as ways to increase the usage of 4G services in Indonesia, targeting young and highly experienced 3G users as early adopters.