Australian mobile users appear to be gravitating towards Virgin Mobile for their portable communication needs thanks mostly to the satisfactory services delivered by the telco owned and operated by Virgin Group owner Richard Branson, a new report said on Thursday.

According to a study conducted by Roy Morgan Research, Virgin Mobile has been raising its customer satisfaction levels and in the last half of 2010, 84 percent of Virgin Mobile subscribers gave their thumbs up to the quality of services provided by the telco, coming from the 79 percent approval recorded in January to June of last year.

On the other hand, the study said that Vodafone saw its customer satisfaction levels steadily slipping by at least four percentage points for year-on-year 2010 as Vodafone mobile users' approval declined from the 74 percent seen at the start of the year to 70 percent by the end of December.

The trust retreat of its customers was mostly attributed to Vodafone's deteriorating quality of service as subscribers complained of notorious drop calls, sluggish data services and weak signals that even prompted many Vodafone users to file a class lawsuit against the telco.

Yet it appears though that Vodafone's woes failed to dampen Australian mobile consumers' general trust to the quality of services dispensed by the industry last year as customer satisfaction soared from the 69 percent posted at the start of the year to 71 percent by December.

The report said that Telstra, the biggest telco player in Australia, saw its customer satisfaction in 2010 rising from 62 percent to 65 percent throughout the year while Optus was able to satisfy its subscribers and registered slight improvements of 73 percent by December, coming from the starting level of 72 percent in January.

"The second half of 2010 has seen overall satisfaction with service providers gradually increase on the back of a resurgent Telstra," according to Roy Morgan Research director Andrew Braun.

Morgan lauded the industry for the transparency it shown especially during moments of "service difficulties due to events such as flooding and poor coverage," as he hope that telco players remain committed to upgrading their performance for the first six months of the current year.