The headline on Aperio CI’s press release yesterday pretty much sums it up: “Merger or No Merger: Verizon Will Win Big, Off-Brand Wireless Operators Will Win a Little. Sprint, AT&T & T-Mobile Are All At-Risk.”  

The release refers to an online survey conducted March 28-29 that included 5,337 respondents across the United States. It was done by Aperio’s research affiliate, Left Right Research, which also conducts “The Stony Brook Poll” on how well Americans understand money and financial systems.  

While these latest survey results are likely to trigger smiles at Verizon Wireless, it should be stated that Verizon is not a customer of Aperio’s data management services, nor are any of the other carriers mentioned in the report. Aperio CI CEO Duffy Mich might like to get any and all of them on board as customers, but for now, it seems as though his company is doing pretty well with the business it has in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Mich himself has been in the telecom business since 1977 and has been running Aperio for 20 years, and while speaking with him, it’s clear that he takes a lot of pride in how his surveys are conducted.  

In this one about wireless services, researchers asked open-ended questions, namely: “What comes to mind when you hear the name (Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon)?” The results show that respondents’ answers were positive toward Verizon more than twice as much as they were negative. Sprint and AT&T both had negative responses that were more than double the positive ones, and T-Mobile’s positive responses were slightly greater than the negative ones.  

Here are some of the bullet points from Aperio CI, with my commentary added in parentheses. 

• Verizon is the clear winner overall, with highest positive views and lowest negative views. (Not too surprisingly; plus, the survey was done after Verizon released the iPhone.)

• T-Mobile is perceived as the lowest cost provider by a strong plurality of respondents. (Again, not surprising since that’s been its reputation for many years.)

• AT&T wins the award for the high-cost provider, since it is perceived as the most expensive of the four major operators. (Huh? I think Verizon and AT&T are pretty neck and neck when it comes to costs.)

• Verizon clearly wins the network quality award. (No shocker here.)

• AT&T was winning the award for Best Phones until Verizon started to sell the iPhone. (OK)

• Sprint doesn’t win any awards. (Uh-oh. Didn’t they just move up the rankings in the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) released this week? Sprint tied with Verizon in customer satisfaction, so this seems a little harsh.)

Both the ACSI and Aperio surveys show troubling times for AT&T and T-Mobile. ACSI founder Claes Fornell has said it’s common to find a reduction in customer satisfaction after mergers, but it’s rare for customer satisfaction to drop ahead of a merger. AT&T and T-Mobile both showed a large deterioration in customer satisfaction and customer service in the ACSI scoring.  

That would seem to point to good signs for Verizon. Earlier this week, Verizon Communications President and COO Lowell McAdam called the merger “inevitable,” which just corroborates earlier indications from the company that it isn’t going to raise a big fuss over it. There’s little incentive for Verizon to oppose it if it wants to add to its acquisition roster in the future.  

Another reason for Verizon to root for the merger (besides it being a distraction for AT&T for a year or so): If AT&T and T-Mobile customers are unhappy now, they’re probably only going to get more cranky and likely to switch. If you’re an AT&T customer post-merger, you’re not too happy that T-Mobile customers get better pricing; as a T-Mobile customer who gets acquired by AT&T, you’re constantly worried about AT&T raising your rates. According to the survey, T-Mobile has the most volatile base, as 49 percent of T-Mobile customers said they were likely to churn over the next year.  

So, wouldn’t that suggest that Sprint, while vehemently opposed to the merger, would be a winner as well? Not according to Aperio, whose survey also shows more than 25 percent of T-Mobile and Verizon customers have a negative view of Sprint. (Also, nearly 25 percent of T-Mobile customers have a negative view of AT&T.)  

It should be noted that the “off brand” wireless providers that Aperio’s press release refers to are those who are not one of the Big 4, so you can put Cricket/Leap and MetroPCS and other brands in that category, which will probably gain a little whether the merger goes through or not.  

Under the “no merger” scenario, it also would seem to me that T-Mobile would be a winner, at least in the short term. That $6 billion break-up fee is nothing to sneeze at. The break-up fee includes $3 billion in cash, about $2 billion worth of spectrum and a roaming agreement valued at around $1 billion, according to Reuters. How much that bundle would help T-Mobile in the longer run isn’t crystal clear. But by then, maybe Sprint would have a clearer path to LTE, and you could potentially make a case for a Sprint/T-Mobile tie-up – if you’re strictly figuring they bring their networks together for LTE. Even with that, it seems like a tough sell given their divergent base technologies and Sprint’s storied history with the Nextel network.  

As for the survey that Left Right Research did in March, Mich notes that it was done after the merger was announced but before it was more widely discussed. Last week’s Senate hearing raised all kinds of questions (and not so many answers) about AT&T’s spectrum position, jobs, innovation, the state of competition and just in general, what the wireless landscape would look like if the deal goes through. 

All of which is to say, it’s not nearly the slam dunk it might have appeared to be at first glance (OK, to me and maybe some lawyers who work for AT&T who must have been really, really confident). If the survey respondents saw any of that hearing, they may well have changed their minds about more than a few things. Then again, it may have just reinforced the negative vibes for unhappy customers.