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Wholesale MOBILE the Conventional View of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator Is out of Date

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Wholesale MOBILE the Conventional View of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator Is out of Date IT’STELECOMMUNICATIONS OUR OPINION... INSIGHT SHARED SERVICES WINTER 2008 Wholesale MOBILE The conventional view of the mobile virtual network operator is out of date. Service providers that buy wholesale minutes at a discount price and sell no- frills telephony and text messaging to price sensitive customers are finding it hard to survive. This old guard will soon be superseded by virtual operators whose business models come from the world of internet services. Problematic partnerships attribute the failures to bad marketing AUTHOR The wholesale channel for mobile and poor business decisions by individual network operators is open and growing, companies? Or were they due to viability but it is riddled with problems. problems with the MVNO business model itself? Industry analysts highlight the increasing value of the mobile virtual network The impact of MVNO partnerships on operator (MVNO) business. Yankee the network operator needs careful Group projects that MVNO services in analysis as well. Even the best wholesale the US will produce revenues of $10.7 plan can cause conflicts of interest. The billion by 2010 and attract 29 million scale and growth potential of this subscribers, although a small elite of business makes the operators keen to first-tier companies will account for compete for new contracts. almost 80 per cent of this market. On both sides of the Atlantic, however, The UK wholesale market alone will be Duncan Stewart is an industry prominent MVNOs have failed, raising worth about £1 billion this year and could consultant working in the 1 telecommunications team of our questions about the sustainability of double in value by 2012 . Choosing the business transformation group. businesses that do not own a mobile wrong MVNO strategy can, however, His expertise includes strategy infrastructure but market themselves as damage an operator’s overall business. and marketing, value propositions independent service providers. and business development. He is The costs of building and managing an particularly interested in infrastructure to support MVNOs are innovation and R&D from both In theory, this business model makes economic sense for both the MVNO and high and operators might never recover business model and technology perspectives and regularly works the network operator. Virtual players their investments. Furthermore, MVNOs with Fujitsu Laboratories on usually target niche segments of the that offer standard voice and SMS technology futures. community that the incumbents find services exacerbate the industry’s difficult to reach, thus generating traffic problems with customer churn and the Outside of the office Duncan is often found on the rugby pitch and revenue streams that would not downward pressures on pricing and or supporting his favourite team, otherwise exist. The reality today, average revenue per user (ARPU). the Leicester Tigers. particularly in western Europe, is far Operators need to evaluate the potential from harmonious. Most MVNOs are impact of resellers on their core business; [email protected] struggling and the operators face a toxic co-ordinating their wholesale and retail combination of business cannibalisation, packages is a major challenge. market saturation and economic downturn. As they weigh up the opportunities 1 http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/News/97108 against these risks, it is also vital for /uk_networks_ramp_up_mvno_activities.html Hundreds of MVNOs have designed and operators to understand how the MVNO launched new services, but very few market is going to change. stand out as true success stories. Can we TELECOMMUNICATIONS INSIGHT SHARED SERVICES Understanding success and failure Other MVNOs, however, have survived In the early years of this decade, when and grown by targeting specific social the hype around the MVNO model was at categories. These successes include a peak, it was widely believed that niche Labara Mobile and Lycamobile, which branding would become the best way to specialise in telephony and SMS services attract and retain subscribers on mobile for ethnic groups, and Blyk whose pan- networks. What actually happened was European service targets young people that early MVNOs, such as Virgin who are willing to view advertising in Mobile and Tracfone, saw that the pre- exchange for free minutes and texts. paid business was still relatively untapped and took advantage of this gap In general, though, it has become in the market before the network increasingly difficult for any MVNO to operators ramped up their own pre-paid compete against the major operators in offerings. Virgin Mobile, which launched basic voice and SMS services. The in 1999, was the world’s first MVNO and spread of flat rate voice and data plans, became the most successful in both the not only for post-pay but also for pre- US and Europe. Many others tried to paid services, has strengthened the hand emulate its business model, but failed to of the network operators. MVNOs, establish a significant market presence. whose costs are determined by the wholesale price of the minutes that they MVNOs proliferated in the Nordic buy, cannot compete with the all-you- countries before they appeared in other can-eat telephony tariffs. Furthermore, markets. The new entrants differentiated the network operators are better placed to their services by cutting voice and text secure the most popular handsets and can prices and took customers away from the negotiate better terms with the suppliers. established operators. The net result was The volumes at which MVNOs trade are considerable decline in ARPU and falling seldom high enough to get the OEMs share values across the industry. Stability excited. was restored after most of the leading MVNOs were acquired by network As we move into a new era of wireless operators2. communications it is clear that the traditional MVNO model is flawed. Japan proved to be an easier environment Voice is now a saturated market and for MVNOs, partly because they met a reselling bulk minutes is no longer rising demand for data services and economically viable. MVNOs are partly because there were only two therefore moving away from mobile operators that could act as conventional telecommunications and wholesalers. into activities that look more like internet services. The US climate was much harsher. New MVNOs such as Helio and Amp’d promised to be different by concentrating on value added applications and content- based services. Subscriber numbers for both have come in well under forecast leading to substantial losses. Even Disney, one of the biggest brands in the world, tried to penetrate the US mobile market through two separate initiatives; 3 both attempts ended in closure . 2 http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/interim/ feb06_report/comms_mkt.pdf 3 http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-disney- mobile-closingsecond- disney-mvno-to-shutter-wdig-will-explore-l/] TELECOMMUNICATIONS INSIGHT SHARED SERVICES Opportunities for MVNOs download any of 88,000 book titles from Most of the emerging opportunities for its store in less than one minute to a MVNOs involve data services or Kindle user in any location with cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) coverage. communications. New handset types such as the iPhone, coupled with faster speeds A second cluster is emerging around and quality improvements on the medical services. Qualcomm has networks, have accelerated the demand announced the launch of an MVNO, for mobile data delivery and are paving LifeComm, that will to help individuals the way for more vertical market to live with conditions like diabetes, services. Wireless M2M applications asthma and heart disease. The company have advanced beyond the early metering describes its service as a ‘virtual nurse’ applications that required only a low data that will evaluate various bio- rate and now support services like real- measurements, assist users to comply time video surveillance and medical with prescribed treatments and provide monitoring. The compound average advice and information when they are annual growth rate for M2M services in needed. Europe now stands at 42.9 per cent and Wireless applications are already making forecasts suggest that this rapid expansion will continue4. an impact in transport management and additional services are under The introduction of information devices development. Navigation equipment that connect to the internet through supplier TomTom, for example, plans to wireless networks supports the long term become an MVNO in order to deliver progression towards cloud computing. In traffic updates and other data to its GPS- ten years time all networks will be enabled devices. This cluster will also ubiquitous, high-speed and IP-based. include integrated reservations for public From a user perspective this will mean transport and ‘smart city’ applications the replacement of items like cash, keys that control traffic lights and street and loyalty cards with connected devices. cameras. The automotive industry, For the MVNO, cloud computing meanwhile, is working on wireless presents opportunities to develop new communications services to reduce the types of service and to experiment with risks of collision, alerting drivers to alternative business models. potential dangers or even taking control of the braking systems on their cars5. New trendsetters are starting to appear. Internet retailer Amazon.com, in-car The advance of wireless data services is navigation systems vendor TomTom and also producing a cluster of companies mobile messaging infrastructure
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