3G/ 4G Telecom Technology; User Acceptance Among Educated Youth of Pakistan

Abstract

State of the art telecom technologies i.e. 3rd Generation/ 4th Generation (3G/ 4G) have been launched in Pakistan since 23rd April, 2014. Pakistan is one of the late adopters of these technologies. Research is needed to explore various factors influencing user acceptance of these technologies. This study makes use of a popular leading model i.e. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)and validates it in the scenario of Pakistan. This research predicts user acceptance for 3G/ 4G mobile services and behavioral intention associated with it among educated youth in Pakistan (Islamabad/ Rawalpindi/ Wah regions due to richness of educational opportunities for youth.) not only because youth forms major portion of users of these services in Pakistan but also service providers have focused to attract educated youth through their advertising campaigns Young generation in Pakistan uses telecom devices much more than any other age group as 77% of users lie in 21-30 age bracket, while 12% in 31-40, 9% in 10-20 and 1% in 41 and above aged people. Accordingly, young generation in Pakistan is the focus of mobile telecom operators with regards to customer base, hence the main focus of this study is also the educated youth. The research explores and analyses usage of 3G/ 4G services by educated youth to establish whether Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness which are the key constructs of TAM are useful in predicting Behavioral Intention among educated youth for 3G/ 4G services? Survey strategy is employed in this research by taking into account simple random sampling. A structured questionnaire has been adopted for this study with due concentrations for reliability and validity. Through statistical analysis, it was found that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a positive direct relationship with Behavioral Intention to use 3G/ 4G technology. The research will be helpful for telecom service providers in Pakistan to contrive strategies for increasing the adoption trend of 3G/ 4G technologies.