The MVNO phenomenon is part of the growth logic in mature mobile markets and is helping to stimulate growth in emerging ones. New growth outlets are required to develop the non mainstream customers as is the case in Western Europe and North America, where large areas still remain to be conquered. The development path open to MVNOs depends a great deal on context and on a market’s technological and regulatory situation. In some cases, mobile virtual network operators are being backed by regulators; such as in Spain, with regulator CMT, who see them as a means of boosting competition in the mobile sector.
A new mobile landscape is taking shape, populated by generalist operators, chiefly MNOs, and by speciality operators positioned in increasingly targeted customer segments, but which nonetheless still depend on MNOs. Existing MVNOs have taken one of two approaches: Low-cost MVNO playing the price card, at the cost of fragile profits; Niche MVNO working to attract overlooked or poorly served customer niches – the real challenge there being to generate ARPU from existing customers with tailor-made offers.
