Business Planning an MVNO, Travel SIM or Roaming IMSI product - free Webinar

 We are kicking off the end of 2023 with some free Webinars looking at the key issues facing the doing of Mobile Wholesale vs. the talking, some of them with live eSIMs for delegates (depending on location) so get enrolled today:

Business Plan & Business Planning and MVNO, MVNE, Travel SIM / Mobile Roaming Product

This is an online webinar, enroll at Eventbrite

What is the P-GW or GGSN and why do more IoT, MVNO and Enterprises have their own?

The Packet Gateway or P-GW, previously GGSN in 3G architecture was something generally in a full MVNE or MVNO or IoT player would have, with resellers mostly using their host’s APN and Data Node. This is changing as data is becoming a key differentiator in many areas, however interestingly becoming less important in others, with many players choosing the simplicity of host Carrier APNs (mobile data settings).

 

New Short videos and commentary on what has changed for HSS and P-GW in 2022

You wait years for a video and then two come along at once. Like and subscribe as there are more coming weekly / daily

 

MVNO Gold Rule #5 - Launch your MVNO with a single goal and stick with it, best one is Loyalty imo

So we have a new post and this is the first post which is based around a video, or a vlog, if you will, as opposed to some of the videos now being done adding to and updating some of the key posts. This one is a key one arising from a conversation with a customer, which hits on a question we have been analysing following going through CRM to see what makes an MVNO successful. Most of the key ones have had loyalty as the key. There are other factors to consider, especially as explained again and again here in these pages: the biggest enemy of the MVNO is not failure; it's never getting to market, and one of the key mistakes which can be made is choosing your systems around for example revenue generation and low cost, when you actual focus is customer loyalty!

If its about brand loyalty then chose your channels, partners and providers around this

So you can see from this diagram, from the very beginning an mvno needs to work out if it's going to be:

1.  premium or discount or 

2. whether it's doing an MVNO either for the revenue as a new revenue stream or it's doing it for the loyalty and 

Obviously these can change over time, and they do -  that's life, right? However life is a lot easier if you know what you're doing, or at least try to plan what you are doing in the beginning and you build your platform and your solution, and you choose your partners around this.

So an example being the two arrows that we have off to the left if you're going to be a discount operator then you may choose a customer service that's low cost which which is kind of at odds with you being premium but it may also impacts your ability to use this product as a revenue service because people probably will see this low-cost and then you won't necessarily contract happy customers and even as a loyalty product because this customer service that you choose may be at odds with how your customers want to be supported with regards to the rest of your business.

Then other things to think around that are for example the branding the marketing the pricing and your channels, so again, what I've seen happening in many MVNOs is that a big established company will decide: “right, I am going to be an mvno I will employ xy&z salesperson from mobile to make sure my mvno is a success as I have heard the worse thing in the world is a failed MVNO, right?” 

Wrong! if you are setting that up from a pure loyalty perspective then establishing the mvno in all the 3rd party channels is not a good idea because

a) it's a very expensive way to sell and 

b) it's going to place your product where all the competitors are and so 

c) you've just wasted a lot of money and commission on a channel, people and processes  that is at odds with the whole concept of your loyalty.

d) your cost of acquisition has just doubled or tripled the RoI

To give you an example, a supermarket mvno in the beginning made most of its sales via its own online channel on a Monday and Tuesday... This is not a coincidence, this is because people were shopping in that supermarket during the weekend and looked at their phones in their supermarket, and the ones that did not buy directly in the store decided to have a little look online to make sure it was a good deal, or just waste their time as customers have every right to do when making a purchase, and then went direct to the customer’s online store. 

Why would you then enable this large amount of customers, who have been into your store, then they have been onto your website, all in your colours, your brand, your flavour of how things are done... to then give them the option to further delay the purchase and go to one of the indirect channels where you are going to pay commission and there is a risk that you will lose that customer in the process, and the experience that customer experience is outside of your control and indeed the customer service post service is likely to be inferior, or at the very least different: It just does not make sense, however that is the situation I find myself in time and time again when launching an MVNO within a large organisation. 

Just because you don't have experience in mobile does not mean that as a successful business, having launched many different products and services in many different horizontals and verticals you should not ask, question, double question and then triple question: “why am I doing this in mobile?”:  Does it make sense or is it just because I've employed somebody who was in mobile and that's the way they did it for a product and a service that is in a completely different space on this diagram above.

At the end of the day, if its a brand play, mobile is all about brand loyalty...

These are all points that I've put here on this blog, but I covered differently in the vlog, sorry video so to get the full low down, experience The Full Monty the full hoo-ha the 360 the total immersive experience you need to check out the video as well as read this and you need to read this again probably after the video and then like comment subscribe hit the notification button if you liked it anyone more content like this … thanks!

 

NFV cloud MVNO conference 2015

Cloud NFV MVNO MVNE round table #MVNOIS 2015

As the first on some hopefully more views from the #MVNOIS conference 2015 in Nice, here is a quick note on the round table I was dragged onto by Informa due to having being building a fully cloud based NFV MVNE platform for the last few months. Google's project Fi has brought a lot of this to the forefront as global MVNOs and multi-national roaming require NFV and cloud MVNO.

NFV MVNOs and MVNEs making way for more disruptive, flexible, global / local mobile services

The round table was interestingly represented by HP (whose servers we incidentally used for our cloud NFV MVNE) Oracle (think Tekelec, ACME), Syniverse and Yaana, which gave us a very good panel of people in the industry in the security, law enforcement, hardware, software and cloud services space.

The most interesting outcomes were as follows:

NFV Cloud MVNO makes it easier and good for Global

One of the key take aways was the fact that NFV and Cloud makes it easier to roll-out and scale MVNOs and MVNEs nationally, and internationally. I can relate to having built international MVNOs and MVNEs - having to chose, MVNA / MVNE, full MVNO or Build Transfer Operate MVNO model from the beginning, possibly having to throw away one or more of the platforms and re-issue MVNO SIMs if you get it wrong is a big challenge. Similarly, so is global expansion: having to use one platform in one territory (e.g big/full) and another in another (e.g. small/MVNA) is just not good.  

NFV cloud essentially brings IT plus Telco together: good for LTE & WiFi

In the good old days you had to buy lost of boxes to run a mobile network, then lots of boxes to run a wi-fi network - if you wanted to make them work together, you needed more boxes, more integration... NFV Cloud lets and MVNO or MVNE run all / mots of its services on a virtual machine, as well as the wi-fi management. In pure LTE terms this means an radius and diameter on the same boxes, same network: think lower latency

NFV cloud MVNOs and the eSIM

Previously a lot of MVNOs got into trouble, if they were ill-advised, by not putting the right provisioning, activation, and SIM management processes in place from the start, which can be very costly as the MVNO grows: many believe a SIM costs less than a dollar, which it does in terms of the 'plastic', but the association of this SIM with a mobile core, OSS / BSS, CRM, BI, etc systems is at least ten fold if not more. An MVNO usually only orders a few hundred thousand SIMs max up front; eSIMs however, due to the large up-front volume, mean next generation MVNOs and MVNEs are having to look NFV and cloud based to be cost effective. Period.

NFV is more disruptive

NFV essentially separates out the hardware from the software, meaning that costs are contained, distributed, transparent and delivery / transition is simpler, quicker and as local / global as required

NFV is not pure cloud and still needs localisation

The biggest misconception that brings walls and heads together is the concept that you can run this anywhere: the truth is that a lot of it you can, and as we move to LTE and away from legacy signalling and media we will - but the truth of the matter is that certain services mean locality is essential: HLRs and HSSs often need to keep data protected in a certain area and GGSNs  / PG-Ws need localisation to avoid latency, then there are security, government intervention and other issues to consider. 

NFV is about standardised hardware

a common view / misconception about NFV is that its all virtual machine and cloud, but a key component is the ability to break out from the virtual environment on standardised hardware when necessary. A great example was from Oracle where they have had to break-out voice encoding into a standard non virtualised machine. We have found this with certain media drivers as well. The key here is that: you have all that is possible on a, for example HP server(s) but the voice encoding needs to go native: then you add another, in this case, HP box of similar specs, with more or less known specification, most likely the same drives, memory, SAN, etc. and have it running voice outside of NFV. 

MVNO Conference 2013 Rome LTE MVNO opportunity

I though I would share my slide and thoughts on LTE and the MVNO, having written many of the requirements, negotiated a major full MVNO with LTE and now building the full LTE MVNO, here in the UK for yet another FTSE 100 company entering mobile.

The Opportiunities for LTE in MVNO and LTE wholesale are huge

I feel in a strong position to talk about the opportunity because I have negotiated a lot of MVNO agreements over the last 10 years across mostly Europe, which has seen the advent of 2G MVNO and 3G MVNO and its contractual, organisational and other issues. Also because at Virtuser we run a lot of value added services for MVNOs, like top-up over SMS and OTA data settings for MVNOs so we see what handsets are being used, what data propositions are being used and other first hand experience of not just walking the talk, but walking the walk, to use the consulting analogy (consultants are often accused of only being able to talk the talk, or at most talk the walk :))

In assessing the LTE MVNO opportunity, we need to look at the facts, not 3G+

Its important that we look at the facts when assessing the LTE opportunity and not make the 3G mistakes, not only on the commercial proposition side, but also from a network and business side. That is: its clear that 4G handsets are slower in uptake than 3G, and that so far this service, as such, commands a premium over 3G. We also know that data currently represents high double digits percentages of network running costs (87% in the case of a major MNO in the UK) but no where near these levels of revenues. We also know that while mobile data costs in the region of 5X the cost to provision, it does not command a yield price 5X that of fixed broadband data due to strong competition on the MNO retail market... Wholesale therefore is a significant opportunity for MNOs and MVNOs to charge the higher yields and returns to MNOs and MVNOs alike in this space. This will require the MNOs, and their notorious contracts to adapt and enable all new MVNOs with "4G ready" status.

Please can we not see MVNOs still launching with 3G SIM cards 7 years from now like with 3G

 I was still negotiating 2G SIM card deals for MVNOs in 2007, 7 years after 3G! All new MVNOs should be 4G ready MVNO or LTE ready MVNOs, however you wish to call this. This means 4G MVNO SIMs, but also 4G LTE MVNO on the MNO roadmap, in the commercial contracts and support services.

4G has had a lot of marketing spend and will be big, but a 4G MVNO campaign does not need  huge spend

A lot of marketing money has been spent on 4G and it will be big, but that does not mean 4G MVNO marketing needs to be big. Sure, EE has spent tens of millions, if not hundreds, on Kevin Bacon on prime TV ATL campaign... but they also launched #OM4G around the social networks and hit exactly the same audience for the cost of a couple of your marketing execs and some creative freedom free of corporate risk constraints (unlikely in an MNO :)) Data MVNOs like Bliep* launched and grew almost entirely on Twitter. Cheap marketing and a niche = low SAC, the mainstay of wholesale. add the fact that MVNOs are generally attracting a higher yield for their data and we have an ideal scenario for 4G to pull us out of the 3G hell we have, where heavy competition and unlimited packages mean 5% of the users are using 95% of the data and nobody can get a fast connection when they need it, reliably at least.

Clever Twitter and social marketing by MVNOs that is too risky for MNOs can hit at core 4G data market with low SAC

So the dawn of clever MVNO marketing is already here, and shifting the focus of MVNO marketing spend from being like MNO spend (mainly ATL with some dabbling elsewhere) to very experimental, experiential and social marketing... exactly what internet savvy 4G target market consumes. So no need for an overcomplicated six degrees of separation to attract a market and generation who are more 4G aspirational than 4G ready.

So you got past 4G and LTE contractual, MNO roadmap and other issues: is your MVNO platforms operationally ready?

Many MVNOs today have 3G, however nobody uses it as they are obsessed with competing with MNO bundles. The fact is that 50% of UK smartfone users use less than 100mb of data, and the rest use around 200mb. That means that by paying as much as 5p to 10p per megabyte on an MVNO, these users will be better off than getting an unlimited MNO tariff. What is more, the host MNO is better off, as retail yields are around ten times less than this. The MVNO is better off, as these data revenues are what shifts MVNOs form what I call a "£10 minus ARPU MVNO" to a "£10 plus ARPU MVNO".

By enabling the most advanced OTA MVNO data settings on the market we have seen huge growth in data usage in even markets which the MVNO would never assume they could generate usage.

The key issues around negotiating LTE MVNO and getting an MVNO 4G ready

The back-end is still critical, even the slickest MVNO architecture from tier 1 providers does not come with the back-end to enable MVNO friendly OTA and APN data settings, some of them incur up to 50% of customer care calls, which at an average of around £4.50 cost to an MVNO of a customer care call today, can easily wipe out the increased ARPU from data, and even all the profit from a user. Finally, the proposition needs to work. From running the SMS tariff top-ups form MVNOs we have great insight to the propositions MVNO customers actually buy, and they are very different from what most MNO propositions are, and a world away from the tizzy that MVNO management and proposition consultants can whip themselves into.

Every informative case study should end with a shameless plug for our services Virtuser MVNO consultancy :)

mvno from a customer acquisition perspective

MVNO from a Customer Acquisition Perspective

One thing that is often overlooked by MVNOs is to look at the MVNO from the customer's perspective. This is important, as one of the quickest routes to failed MVNO bin is to create a mini-me mobile network, as you essentially create a product that has no differentiation  but somebody else's version has much more marketing, retail presence, support, existing customers, etc.

The customer perspective is an important reminder if the fact that as an MVNO, while you are a partner of one MNO, you are a competitor of the other MNOs, other MVNOs on your host network, and more importantly, your host MNO if you are not careful. Why is this important? Never lose site of the fact that tmobile he wholesale business is all about acquire customers, a

MNO to the Customer

The MNO's routes to market before the MVNO were typically either direct, via a retail store, which may or may not be its own now and via a service provider, see the red and red/blue sections below. Essentially, for the MNO, the MVNO (and MVNA) has allowed the MNO to reach a wider customer base (grey section) than the MNO ordinarily would have. The MVNA is critical, as it is the "last mile" attracting the most niche markets. The triangular shape of the MVNA indicates how the MVNA is where the most bleeding edge activity is happening  such as micro-MVNOs with just a Facebook page, where the brand almost belongs to its customers, and customers may go from brand to brand.

MVNO to the customer

The MVNO to the customer route is important as the MVNO has to realise that, while they may have an angle to their niche, they also have strong competition from a) the network operators, who have shiny marketing, and b) that a customer is by now a complex beast, and other MVNOs and indeed, smaller niches from MVNAs may be equally attractive.

Moreover, it is important for the MNO and MVNO to be honest about which customers in a niche they are better at attracting and maintaining. You, the MVNO, may own a niche lock stock and smoking barrel, however by the time you get to a customer who wants a subsidised iPhone and unlimited texts, data and voice... its it not better to pass that customer on your your host MNO as a lead???? 

Customer to the MVNO

Why is the customer going to chose your product? If you just rebrand an MVNO, what value are you adding? Do not underestimate small value adds, sometimes the simplest things like customer care in your language is enough, and key: its a differentiator!

I reality, if we look at the grey customer section, it goes from niche on the far left, to mass market on the right.

Original MVNO from customer perspective page

MVNO DEFINED FROM A CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE

To Fully understand the MVNO, and moreover Next Generation MVNOs, we have to look outside the legacy network led definitions of an MVNO, as an MVNO is customer driven, and therefore business driven business model. From a customer perspective both the MNO and the MVNO are their "Network Provider". That is Virgin Mobile is seen to its customer as their network provider, not the host MNO, just as an MNO is seen as a network provider. The benefit here for the MNO is sales without marketing spend, but more often than not sales the MNO was unlikely to reach on its own. A service provider, or airtime provider would be like Martin Dawes in the UK for example, which was one of the originally mandated airtime providers in the UK; here, both the host 'MNO' and the 'Service Provider' are seen to provide the service to the customer. This was sometimes confusing, and of little value-add to the customer, with the only differentiation coming in the shape of price and maybe some differentiated billing. In general however, the customer seems to prefer a single brand. The same is the case for the "powered by" model - the customer does not care  which MNO powered their MVNO, they have already chosen their "network". Hence Virgin Mobile being voted the best network every year in a row since launch in the UK. Similarly, there would be little value in the MVNE and MVNO brand being apparent to the customer. Other Diagrams: MVNO and the brand MVNO from the customer perspective  Back to main page  Other Resources: Fixed-Mobile Convergence  Virtuser  Next Generation MVNO Report ©Copyright 2001-2005 Christian Borrman, All Rights Reserved. Reproduction Prohibited

Keep calm and #mvno_

That's all I have to say...

... wise words ...

emerging market MVNOs and spare capacity

Emerging Market MVNO markets 

An interesting comment on the MVNO explained page posted such an interesting question I have decided to post about it in its own right:

"Hello, thanks for your insight on MVNO. very insightful. However, my country has refused to license MVNO operations. i have held presentations, sent them documents, written articles, directed them to the PrepaidMVNO website and even invited them to the MVNO summits. Their major concern is network congestion on the host MNO. service quality has been quite...actually really bad, the quality of mobile phone services are bad and the logic is that the networks have taken more subscribers and thus more traffic than their networks can handle, so introducing MVNO's may add pressure the their networks and further reduce service quality on the networks. i have argued against this logic without success. what will you say to this."

This raises a number of issues that I have seen come and go over the years in MVNO, and now coming again. Essentially, congestion/capacity was the key concern of the first UK MNOs prior to launching the first MVNOs, but their workaround was a commercial one, which is always encouraged, as can be seen in the financial results of MNOs supporting MVNOs!

Emerging market MVNO struggle

The thinking behind blocking MVNOs on this basis is flawed and obviously one arising from lobbying by people who have not taken the time to examine the facts, let alone the finances, which make MVNOs a no-brainer. However, in this same way, there are well documented cases of how  many US carriers fought and lobbied the US government for 10 years to stall the progress of the internet, a product which now forms the biggest part of their bottom line and dominates the product sections of their websites...

So, let's deal with the points one by one:

1. No network runs at full capacity all the time, like every and any service, there are peaks and troughs, and no two networks in the same country have the same profiles either. 
2. These peaks and troughs are very significant in both MNOs and MVNOs alike, with their networks running at eighty-some or ninety-some percent at peaks for a short period of the day, but typically at anything between 30-50% during the day, and obviously pretty much 0% all night.
3. No two networks in the same country have the same load profiles, in operators I have seen over the years across many countries have very different profiles due to having attracted a very different customer base. 
4. network capacity varies geographically as well
5. some types off traffic are more consuming of resources than others, for example now data makes up 80%+ of MNO network costs, but does not make anywhere near that percentage contribution in revenue or profits...
6. As data requirements and mobile penetration expand, if the MNO cannot even handle voice and SMS now, how are they going to tackle data and provide the country with the infrastructure it needs to grow??? If they are tackling this issue properly, voice and SMS capacity for MVNOs should not be a problem...
7. Some MNOs state that they run a very efficient network and therefore are not actively looking for MVNOs however, they do still run some pretty major MVNOs, they are just more selective and chose ones that complement their profile

MVNO African Story

At the time of the original article (2012) and this update (2013) there key barrier example used in Africa is "network capacity" as per above example. I shall be brief:

In short:  if a network were running at full capacity all the time, it would not just be congested as per the argument against MVNOs, but the network would actually fall over and cause major outages for long periods from a functional perspective. Furthermore the operator would surely be falling short of the service/coverage commitments they will have made to get a licence and become an operator in the first place, and certainly will not be able to cope with the data expansion that is needed for a country to grow in this internet age: Whoever is upholding full capacity as a barrier to MVNOs is either conspiring with a short-sighted MNO or MNOs, or having the wool pulled over their eyes by a short-sighted MNO(s)!

MVNO Latin American Emerging markets

There was a great presentation at the MVNO Conference just recently in Barcelona on the Mexican Market and how they managed to get the regulator to open up the market, basically by creating a group, and ringing the regulator and government departments every single day, among other things, very interesting, and good luck; however, I will end on three notes:

1.  you need to arm yourself with facts and show that these arguments have no substance at the same time
2. you can use the cases of the Spanish and Italian markets, which needed the regulator to open the market in 2006/2007, some of the last markets to adapt MVNOs which opened the floodgate for MVNOs
3. There is nothing like some prospects to get the market going... post Virgin mobile UK, every man and his dog approached t-mobile UK (then one2one) with an idea on a napkin to become an MVNO, most of them had no clue... if there is an opportunity, or many smaller opportunities that actually address a market the MNO is not addressing, then this helps as well.

If you like this article, please like us on facebook/mvnos or follow us / +1 on Google+ and of course follow us on twitter @MVNO_

Ad funded mvno business model and the MVNO industry summit

Ad funded MVNO 

As the MVNO summit is just around the corner; a question that is often asked and/or a comment often made in MVNO conferences is:

• will MVNO business model X work in Y country/market, or
• X MVNO business failed so that MVNO model does not work... 

Is the ad-funded MVNO model still viable?

The ad -funded model is one of them, and as such has been part of my new blogs and old legacy MVNO blog for a while and can be found here: MVNO business models. You then of course have the other end of the scale, usually those who argues against MVNOs from the beginning and have now had to swallow their words as MVNOs make bigger and bigger percentages of MNO bottom lines: people who say that MVNOs as a whole  don't work when one happens to fail! Back on the more moderate heckler  let's deal with One of the most frequent is that, if Blyk failed then the ad funded model does not work... This is just plain wrong on a few levels:

1. 50% of all new businesses fail. In this respect, MVNOs are probably one of the best businesses you can invest in, as the failure rate is actually in single % figures in most countries over time. It has been higher, for example in France at first, when the regulator forced MVNOs, the result was that the network operator agreements were so restrictive that they strangled the first MVNOs... however they were all absorbed by the host MNO, so you could argue it was intentional: if they were proper failures the MNO would have set them out to dry rather than absorbing them. Blyk was also absorbed by its MNO - an MNO has full visibility of an MVNOs activities and potential, and they do not flog a dead horse!
2. The "ad" is very generic. If you look at the add business over the last few years you will see most of the traditional spend has all but disappeared and been replaced with display ads, Blyk started with a model based on ads that suddenly went into decline.
3. Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, it has been for 5 years, however this is now changing

Will the Brand MVNO, supermarket MVNO model, etc work in my country? 

In short, what does this mean? well it means that there has never been a better time to launch an ad funded business, as long as you are choosing the right type of ads, when to send them and, like any business, are careful how you spend and manage cash flow.

So, with the biggest MVNO summit to date, now extended to three days, let's make the MVNO Summit about where and how we are moving models like the ad funded model; add funded voice, data and SMS/MMS, to market in new countries, and maybe even take part in the MVNO challenge...

I will be adding to this list over the coming months, feel free to comment, like the  MVNO Facebook page, MVNO Google+ page or follow @MVNO_ on Twitter if you want to be notified of these updates

MVNO VAS

VAS or Value Added Services were once the darling of planet MNO mobile operator, to some extend they still are, only now we seem to have forgotten all the original VAS and just focus on thenew ones like app stores. Then along came the MVNO, the new darling of Mobile, then it went from retail to wholesale and in the fracas we seem to have lost Value Added Services in the MVNO space.

There are a few reasons for this:


Click here to read on

Mobile Roaming Conference Chair's Digest 2011

Mobile Roaming 2011 Digest

The Mobile Roaming Conference was also a great event, and a very successful one too, with a packed schedule of presentations, and a great story built as the presentations moved through the day: starting with the issues, then following with some great case studies and then other strategies for maximising roaming revenue, and making roaming as efficient as possible, from centralising roaming to hubbing to wholesale as part of the roaming strategy... To boot the Hotel was great and the bar proved popular afterwards... so I hear, anyway :)

Roamaing Conference Overview

For those of you who just want the low down, in a few bullets:

• It may be no surprise that volume is increasing as margins are decreasing...
• Data is growing, VAS is growing, voice and SMS is shrinking, just like retail
• Roaming and Wholesale are merging
• We had a great presentation and case study on roaming segmentation which saw a 35% increase in usage, 21% increase in revenue and 13% increase in margin
• EC Roaming regulations require huge amounts of caffeine to sit through... more below
• The IPX is central to CDMA but not yet GSM VAS
• Centralised group roaming departments are doing more group level agreements in a month that they previously did on a country level in a year!

Roaming Conference Presentations:

Here are the bullet point “highlights”:

• As volumes increase but margins decrease things have to change: centralisation, segmentation, more attention to settlement, centralised negotiations by group volume and hubbing...
• The bilateral "spaghetti" model is moving to a more centralised, hubbed "cannelloni" model (yes that second analogy was used).
• Downsizing can just be migrating of smaller routes...
• Data is growing and some interesting VAS were emerging, such a service specific, i.e. Facebook and Twitter daily bundles for example...
• Data is still nowhere near as high as it should be as many just turn data roaming off as the smartphone takes grip, even so it is the growing trend: engaging the "sleeper roamer"! 
• 40% of travellers do not roam at all...
• Thank you messages work... why just AoC roaming welcome messages
• There were a couple of differing views on the EC roaming regulation, especially round the single IMSI, single IMSI breakout or dual IMSI approach... to be honest it is quite clear to me who will go which way (MNOs, MVNOs and hubs), but there is plenty to debate here.
• An interesting point of view was the fact that the breakout model will just drive global revenues to silicon valley, i.e. the Google mobile revenue fund and the Apple mobile revenue share fund
• There is an inbound vs outbound and how bundles should or could make their way from retail into wholesale. We already see it (and very successful!) with some MNOs and MVNOs (we have enabled a few services via the Roaming Welcome message AoC so can see).
• 15% of roaming traffic from one operator was identified as "honey moon" traffic... let's hope it was to elate on happiness and not seek council...
• hubbing not only sees synergies in efficiency, but also revenue assurance!
• MVNOs will drive hub adoption, especially with two month compliance for roaming access in EU roaming regulations
• An analogy was likening the Roaming market to an aviation analogy: air miles, code sharing and alliances are the way forward... there is something in it, though I am not expecting a movie with George Clooney about mobile roaming points anytime soon...
• Airline similarities continue obviously as roaming revenues track airline travel increase... and airline traffic is still growing
• Wholesale is seen a key way to attract the 40% who do not roam at all as well as other "sleeper revenue", VAS is seen as way to get both wholesale and own roaming revenues up, the latter also cannot argue with the stats on segmentation (the former segments itself generally).

MVNO Networking Paris Congress Chair Digest 2011

MVNO Networking Congress 2011 (November) Digest

The MVNO networking congress was a great event, and a very successful one too, just the week before Jayme contacted me to let me know I would be chairing 13 presentation instead of 8, so the schedule was “tight” to say the least!

The MVNO Conference Overview

For those of you who just want the low down, you can see some of the Twitter comments on your left, and my closing bullets were:

• We have seen and continuing to see significant growth in MVNO, so far we have only touched the surface, even in the overcrowded ethnic and low costs space
• MVNO churn is the lowest in pretty much every market
• VAS are key: Data, payments, Social Networking, all generating more value, loyalty and even contributing to any MRG
• Channels are expanding: social, online, new retail
• MVNO growth is now starting in value, as well as size due to previous points

MVNO networking Conference 2012 Presentations:

The intro was pretty quick, I am not big on long intros of the conference of the speakers: speakers bios are so random in their content (we should have top trumps card in the audience if you want to check out bios that are structured instead of random details and regional quirks…) and I think the audience is there to see presentations, so don’t make them wait for presentations… on that note below is my summary, in order to not name names or other anti-social behaviour I do not list by presenter and company but by relevant info. As an Englishman I will no doubt have to engage in some hooliganism afterwards to make up for such sensible and neighbourly behaviour J.

MVNO Networking Conference “highlights”:

• 6 million MVNO customers in France, 50% increase in 2010-2011
• Churn is generally lower in MVNOs (3 sources, 2 continents)
• Annual MVNO churn in France is sub 20% (annual!)
• MVNO customers 14% of UK Market
• “Wholesale is better than no-sale” Old KPN quote was reborn in a pres, good to see!
• One non-full MVNO going full MVNO to have more control over VAS and data provisioning infrastructure as data becomes a key part of their differentiation and marketing strategy
• Another non-full MVNO going full to be able to potentially leverage multiple hosts (not advised, so many MNVOs forget that their host is like their big brother in the playground – even if you do not like him and he may not even care much for you, but if you are on good terms, he can save you getting a wedgie or a swirlie) i.e. you will generally get more from an engaged single MNO than you would ever get by trying to trade MNOs off against each other. This is the case even at initial negotiation stage.
• On this note we had an MNO likening the MVNO to a clown fish and the operator to the sea anemone, with one protecting the other from the rest of the creatures (sharks) in the sea… This MNO is actively seeking clownfish!
• The MNO used to use the MVNE as a filter, now more flexible and used as a solution
• La Poste has 2.2 Million customers in Italy, looking to move to full MVNO due to scale, it is a “buy” vs. “make” strategy.
• La Poste MVNO have the lowest churn in Italy.
• 50% of La Poste customers have made a mobile payments transaction via the card linked with the mobile account.
• Colruyt supermarket MVNO launched in Belgium, a la Tesco Mobile model: the key is a line from the music industry “once a hit, always a hit” if a model has been successful in one country, it is likely to do the same in another, again and again.
• MVNOs managed to make a “per min” and “per message” business back in a “bundle” market space, they are doing the same in data, charging a premium in “per meg” data. In Denmark the main MVNO is doing this at a premium of 2.5x market rate.
• Online is the key channel to avoid “shelf overload”. The customer now has so much choice in the typical retail establishments. Telmore has reached 800,000 subscribers in Denmark (over 12% of Danish market in just one MVNO) mostly via online.
• If not online, other innovative channels are required, especially in places like the Austrian market, where €10 gets you 1000 mins and 1000 SMS, an MVNO has to do more than just traditional channels.
• Social Networking is becoming a key differentiator
• Some interesting comments on the EC Roaming regulation (its all relative, they were interesting as roaming regulation comments, but not interesting enough for a blog!) but if someone is interested enough I can dig them out...