For those wireless service providers wondering if there's really a market in super-fast Internet connections, a new report released just hours ago from J.D. Power and Associates says that, indeed, there's a connection between network experience and wireless spending. It's a positive connection as well, so for those considering expanding network coverage and capacity, there's a whole new reason to go ahead and do so.

The J.D. Power and Associates report made it clear: those wireless customers who regularly experience a quality connection – not just faster, but more consistently fast speeds – routinely spend more on their wireless service than those who don't get the quality connection.

The study – currently in its eleventh year – covered a set of six different geographic regions throughout the United States, covering the waterfront in terms of locations and response possibilities. Regions examined were the West, the Southwest, the North Central, the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with the study also considering a set of 10 common error states that affect a customer's overall calling experience. Those issues included dropped calls and calls that never connected in the first place, as well as lost calls, failed or late voicemails, late text message notices, slow downloads, both Web and e-mail connection errors, and just plain old issues with the audio.

The study showed that, when it comes to what customers are willing to pay for, an experience that yielded few overall incidents of the above listed problems at slow speeds would make users more likely to upgrade their wireless plans to faster speeds. What's more, good experiences will spawn recommendations, as 31 percent of customers who experienced especially good service "definitely will" recommend the carrier who provided said service.

Basically, what this J.D. Power and Associates study ultimately demonstrated is how spectacularly important it is to get users on 4G devices, and get them there in as rapid a fashion as is possible. As it turns out, those customers who use 4G devices actually have greater satisfaction – and thus loyalty – levels than those who use other 3G / 4G standards like HSPA+ and WiMAX (News - Alert). Since 4G LTE customers experience fewer issues overall, their loyalty scores are also higher, meaning the better the network, the more likely a customer is to step up in tiers or just keep the current level.

With the overall economy still soft, it's plain to see why wireless networks would want an intimate understanding of just what goes into a customer's buying decisions. J.D. Power and Associates, meanwhile, has taken something understood to be a truism – the better time the consumer has with the product or service offered, the more likely that consumer is to return to it – and elevated it to be fact thanks to its completed study. Having something like that quantified is always important, especially when it comes to terms of spending more money to augment a network's offerings properly.

But still, this should make it crystal clear: the better a network operates, the more likely users are to spend more to get the most out of a good quality network.