Recently Telegeography, ran an interesting study to investigate the trends in MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) industry. Though current outlook is grim, the future of MVNO industry looks bright, strongly driven by growth in emerging markets.
At present, MVNO operate in N.America, W.Europe & some other countries. In emerging markets like India, China, Brazil etc, where substantial growth in wireless subscriber numbers is reported, have either prohibited MVNO operation or in very nascent stage of development.
The highlights of study can be summarized as:
- In W.Europe & N. America, MVNO accounted 7{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of wireless subscribers in 2003, which now grew over to 9{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} by the end of June-09. During this time, the wireless subscriber base grew by 60{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} in these two regions.
- In contrast, from 2003 to June 2009, the number of wireless subscribers grew over 3.5 billion in emerging markets, but MVNO account only 0.5{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of total subscriber base.
- Globally, MVNO share of wireless subscribers dropped from 3{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} in 2003 to little over 2{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}, but reality is that MVNO have managed to gain the share of subscribers in well developed markets and got some foot hold in emerging markets too, which itself is positive sign.
- MVNO will gain momentum in all around world in next five years, as few markets will approach near maturity and to serve better as well to thrive competition, the regulatory regime will allow MVNO to roll out services in new countries, which will drive the growth momentum.
Whatever may be the case, MVNO are surely going to seize opportunities in emerging markets as far as services loopholes & market segmentation is concerned. In any case, the benefit will be of consumers’, who could get to see the drop in service charges along with launch of varied new services, which mayn’t be possible to deliver in only Mobile Operator (MNO) playing field.
