Mi Mobile on MIUI - Mi IoT on Your Network

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has awarded over 40 MVNO licenses since 2013. Among the recipients, many service providers (e.g. telcos like YuanTel, Snail Mobile, or specialists like Hainan Airlines, Ping An Insurance, CMBC bank, or Youku Tudou - video sharing), retailers (from the big netcos like Alibaba - who launched 'Qinxin' last Summer - or JD.com, to mobile phone retailers like D.Phone or FunTalk, to mobile service retailers like AiSiDi or Telling, to home appliance retailers like Suning or Gome),  manufacturers (e.g. Lenovo, Hisense, Foxconn, or Xiaomi)...

As of August 2015, 26 of the licensees had launched their services, claiming over 10 million subscribers (up from 8.2 the previous month), including 1 for YuanTel. 9 M subs were on China Unicom, 1 M on China Telecom, 0.1 M on China Mobile, which was just starting in the game... and boasts about 820 M subs.

Xiaomi, who sold 60 M smartphones last year, launched "Mi Mobile" last week on China Telecom and China Unicom networks. Surprisingly for a manufacturer, they offer SIM-only services. This company is used to making little margin on each handset, but also to leveraging its customer base through peripherals and convergent service platforms, particularly around its MIUI platform on Android. 

Among the gizmos found on Mi.com: Mi Pad, Mi Box, Mi TV, Redmi Note, Mi Band, Mi Power Bank, and even Mi Air Purifier:

If Mi Mobile is more the Airpocalypse-fighter than the airtime-killer kind of MVNO, MNOs and fellow manufacturers must beware: even before becoming an operator, Xiaomi had the IoT-ready approach players like Samsung lack. And they have a better focus and drive than local rivals Hisense or Foxconn...

mot-bile 2015

Korea's fourth license reload

According to The Korea Herald (May 29), the Korean government is considering reviving the project of a fourth MNO license as part of a plan to stimulate the market.

Is there a need for another 4G network? Korea is well covered with LTE to LTE-A, beefed-up locally through pervasive femtocells and WiFi. And the three incumbents don't want to sit on their laurels: Korea Telecom promised 5G trials for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, and SK Telecom announced a partnership with Google on augmented reality ("T-AR for Project Tango").

Is there a need for more competition? It depends on the profile of the new player, and the impacts on a M-VNO ecosystem that, at long last, is biting into a pie still dominated by SK Telecom, Korea Telecom, and LG U+.

According to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), M-VNOs were claiming a 8.8% market share as of April 21 (up from 2.9% in June 2012), thanks to prices on average 57% cheaper than the MNOs.

But it's not as if you had one fourth player with a 8.8% market share, big enough to contest the leaders on more profitable segments. Today, Korea has 27 M-VNOs, most struggling to make their first profit, and likely to never see it. Significantly, their number of subscribers started to explode when they targeted more discount-seeking audiences (the youth, Chinese migrant workers...).

A perennial candidate for the 4th spot is actually a consortium of M-VNOs: KMI (Korea Mobile Internet) revived their candidacy in October 2013, and defending the existing M-VNO ecosystem could be a stronger argument today. In December 2011, the Korea Communications Commission not only rejected KMI's bid, but also that of IST (Internet Space Time lost the backing of Hyundai Group at a critical moment). Note that the KCC also canceled the auction for the WiBro spectrum. I explained a few months earlier ("A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc") how the attempt by the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Businesses (Kbiz) to enter the market looked more like a lobbying stunt to push WiBro.

A much bigger fish could also seek the fourth license, with more brand power. Typically, CJ Group is already a major player in telecom, IPTV, or multimedia contents. It has the money to invest on new networks (Daum Kakao or Naver would need serious backing), the customer bases to leverage, and the contents to fill the pipes..., but don't bet on price wars with fellow chaebol on the juiciest segments. 
 
A true new entrant from overseas? Global MNOs know how difficult it would be in a country where foreign majors are seldom allowed to take or maintain leading positions (see retail for example: Carrefour and Wal-Mart already gone, Tesco on the back seat). But joining a consortium, or creating one remains a rare opportunity for international platforms to push their solutions in an otherwise locked Korean market. And nowadays, the dominant platforms do not necessarily belong to telecom operators...

Anyway, expect more lobbying ahead of the government's guidelines, expected by the end of June.

• See also "Daum Kakao, Google Campus... Korean platforms on steroids", other posts related to innovation in Korea.

mot-bile 2015

* "Consortium to bid for 4th mobile carrier in S. Korea" (Yonhap News - 2013/10/08)

SigFox? Slow Telecom to Speed Up IoT

What if the smartest thing to do was to play dumb? And when everybody's racing for the best performances, to deliberately aim at the most limited service? SixFox is not exactly 5G on steroids, but rather TETRA on Valium (for those of you who remember Dolphin Telecom). 

SigFox focuses on M2M applications, you know, that formerly un-sexy business that become hot overnight when some marketing genius rebranded it "Internet of Things". Well at SigFox, they don't hesitate to use the old 'machine-to-machine' jargon. We're talking about French entrepreneurs (Christophe Fourtet and Ludovic Le Moan) headquartered in a town of 4,000 souls near Toulouse (Labege), but Labege is an innovation cluster, and Le Moan someone who's already made it before (Scoop.it). Furthermore, SigFox rolled up its first network in San Francisco area, a neighborhood more associated with start-ups and IoT, not to mention players like Cisco. Now it's also attacking the UK with Arqiva.

What do these guys do? Provide connectivity solutions for M2M-IoT applications that DO NOT require more than:
• 140 messages per object per day
• 12 bytes for each message
• 100 bits per second

So don't expect video chats between your toaster and your Ski-Doo. With such constraints, you still can cover a wide array of basic information systems, typically two-way communications with meters or sensors, device location, alerts... Ever the early adopter, Clear Channel was among their first consumers. 

That's long distance wireless (WAN), and any cellco can provide this kind of service, and some m-VNOs have already specialized in M2M, so what's the deal?

SixFox uses Ultra Narrow Band (UNB), and unlicensed spectrum - ISM. In Frisco, that's on 915 MHz (902 usually available in the US), and in Europe on 868 MHz. So the so-called SNOs (SigFox Network Operators) can operate without a license. 

Furthermore, energy costs are really low. According to SixFox's white paper, communicating from an energy meter consumes only 50 microwatts compared to 5,000 over cellular technology, which means that a 2.5 Ah battery shall last 20 years instead of a couple of months.

You won't find much about the cloud costs, or the hardware at the device of the infra levels, but a BS is said to cover a 3-to-10 km radius in urban areas and 30-to-50 km in rural areas. Here too, because there's much less waste at many levels (e.g. protocol data), the network is supposed to consume 200 to 600 less energy than a classic cellular network.

Can this 'slow telecom' approach speed up IoT? Certainly if some guys take this ungratifying part of the job seriously. This is all about minor operations with very low margins, and you want to be among the first ones to reach big volumes. The big players have yet to join the party, and some of them could be tempted to pull out their own broadband UNB gun, or the checkbook (sending SigFox one simple message, under 12 bytes, but preferably for Le Moan and Fourtet, with a lot of 0s).

As of today, on its own counters (on sigfox.com), SigFox claims 157,499,000 messages sent and 3,935 kw saved compared to GSM. I'd like to check these numbers one year from now.

mot-bile 2014

Face Recognition: When Smart TV Goes Too Smart

Samsung wants to implement face recognition in certain smart TVs. The function is already available for mobile devices but here, the idea is to adapt content to viewers, for instance in order block adult content when a kid is watching (tadaa - how about Junior in his Spiderman costume?). Swiss researchers have been studying the concept for years, but for a monitor equipped with an arm that allows the screen to follow the user (picture yourself in your kitchen with flour all over your hands and the urgent need to browse recipes).

Speaking of mobile and TV and following our previous updates about M-VNOs in Korea*, CJ HelloVision just launched "Hello Mobile" on Korea Telecom, and the country's second MSO could post interesting figures with the contribution of parent company CJ Group, still a food franchise powerhouse but now the country's multimedia leader (CGV, CGmedia, CJ Home Shopping...). CJ already proposes many mobile apps and multiplatform services (ie tving), but expect more e-commerce synergies ahead, particularly following the launch of Mobile E-Mart, also on KT. Homeplus (Tesco-Samsung) also considering entering the arena as MVNO.

Hello Mobile follows Insprit (Enspert tablet on Wibro) and SRoaming (Skype Roaming phone rental), also on KT, still the leader with a little more than 300,000 MVNO lines compared to about 50,000 for SK Telecom. Remember: KT struck the first deals two years ago*.

mot-bile 2012

* see "A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc", "Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs", "Korea : Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO"

A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Businesses (KFSB or Kbiz) wants to join SK Telecom, Korea Tecom and LG U+ (LG Telecom) as Korea's fourth mobile network operator.

This bid looks like a complete joke : a Kbiz-led consortium of 900 small businesses would invest about KRW 100 bn (USD 94 M) in "4G Wibro". How could it succeed where much stronger players failed and where MVNOs themselves cannot thrive* ?

Kbiz claims 2.7 million SMEs, but I don't see this greenfield player take those demanding customers from the big boys.

WiBro, a WMAN technology competing with WiMax, remains a Koreano-Korean thing with a convenient 4G label. Typically, KT is advertising about their "4G WiBro" coverage as SKT launches its LTE as the "real 4G", but eventually all 3 MNOs will implement LTE. Note that KT is also willing to close its 2G CDMA networks and proposing nice 3G/4G plans to die hard users, some of which have been keeping prehistoric handsets because of unbeatable unlimited rates.

Kbiz needs Samsung to propose WiBro, and that could be the actual aim of the game : not the candidacy to a license, but the PR operation behind the announcement.

Samsung is the ultimate chaebol, the perfect symbol of those almighties who rule over Korean economy and are often blamed for the weakness of the nation's SME ecosystem. Worse : they create their own SMEs to benefit from pro-SME incentives and suck even more value from the market. Even LEE Myung-bak, the CEO president who came from Hyundai Engineering and Construction, is campaigning about a 'fair society' where chaebols would allow small fish to survive.

I don't know if Kbiz will really go all the way, or if Samsung will pretend to play their game for image's sake... but Korean market remains fun to observe.

mot-bile 2011

* see "Korea : Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO", "Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs"...

Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs

A decade after other countries, Korea is discovering the charms of MVNOhood.

Korea Telecom signed 3 partnerships - a classic mix indeed :
- voice-centric Free Telecom (prepaid offers)
- data-centric EverGreen Mobile (EGMobile)
- entertainment-oriented Entaz (mobile games)

Partnerships were clinched via KTF DoCoMo Mobile and the Fast Incubation Center (FIC), the new unit in charge of stimulating the ecosystem around the company, including a Smart Open Forum.

"Open", but to a certain point : none of the first 3 MVNOs is a big name, even in its own field. Bigger fishes were kept at bay, like ONSE Telecom who, as we saw earlier, was a more than outspoken candidate. It rather looks like the perfect alibi for the regulator, and a convenient training ground for new processes and business models : wider "openings" will be requiered, and KT wants to remain competitive at the international level.

Rivals SK Telecom and LG Telecom will probably follow a similar path. I wouldn't expect from the leader a disruptive deal with a flamboyant player... unless of course the said player is a in-house spinoff in disguise (ie MelOn or another multimedia brand, and a business-centric package.


mot-bile 2010

Korea : Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO

Onse Telecom announced its intention to become a MVNO by 2011, lobbying the National Assembly to pass the law obliging 3 incumbents to open their networks.

The landline operator boasted it could claim 5% of the market (about 2M customers), thanks to lower rates and "differentiating" offers.

I guess Onse execs are more interested in "diversification" than "differenciation" : VoIP is bound to hit seriously their core business in Korea (international voice services - ie Shinbiro calling cards), and all 3 incumbents are also integrated fixed-mobile players, only bigger : LG Telecom is about to follow SK and KT and to merge all its telecom units.

Differenciation through creative marketing ? Don't expect support from the new mother company : Taihan Electric Wire is into wires, fibers, powerlines... Onse itself delivers equipments and systems, even if it stopped its terminal manufacturing activity last year.

Onse Telecom is expected to post profits in 2009, but that will be a premiere after an eight year losing streak. Lately, they've mostly been converting third bonds with warrants into shares...

So the message is not "Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO" as much as "if you want to become a MVNO in Korea, Onse Telecom can help you face the big guys." Of course they could leverage on their customer base, but they also enjoy a certain technical know-how, and the experience of interfacing with different network operators. So they could position themselves as the ideal MVNE, starting with themselves as the first customer.

mot-bile 2009

Free Mobile gets France's 4th 3G license, will offer VoIP

mot-bile 2009 - French regulator ARCEP gave the final nod to Illiad's 100% (for the moment - see previous episodes including "Free: alea jacta est") subsidiary. Free Mobile gave all the guarantees needed and pledged to offer all web services on the mobile, including VoIP.

Also to be noted : total transparency for the cost of mobiles. Consumers will know when they pay for the devices or for the traffic... greenfield Free found a smart way of disturbing the local operators / manufacturers cuisine.

Overall, Free gets 382 points out of 500 : 55/65 for commercial offers, 64/100 for coverage, 20/25 for QoS, 54/60 for relationships with service providers, 22/25 for customer relationships, 22/25 for environment, 22/25 for employment, 56/75 for business plan consistency and credibility, 72/100 for project constistency and credibility.

In a nutshell :
. TTM / commercial launch : 2 years from now.
. coverage : just above the levels required for 3G (voice : 27% at launch instead of 25%, 75% after 5 years, 90% after 8 years instead of 90%), and a contribution to the common effort for 2G coverage of remote areas
. staff : from 1,000 (EOY 2012) to 5,000 (EOY 2018)
. M-VNOs : Free Mobile will accept up to 4 full m-vnos
. devices : offers without terminals, payment of terminals over few months
. voice : an access package including 3 hours of intraeuropean calls for less than 20 euros
. data : all offers include mobile internet access
. customer services : customers can contact for free consumer associations when they want to post a complaint ! The best way to relieve Free's hotlines and to get rid of the said associations !!!

Of course, Free Mobile's capital is as expected very likely to be raised to finance both 3G and FTTH, and that's been clearly specified in the proposal.

Next steps for the ARCEP ? Attributing the remaining blocks of frequencies : 5 and 4.8MHz in the 2.1GHz band (H1 2010 - open to any player), and the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands for 4G (H2 2010).

"L'ARCEP retient la candidature de Free Mobile" (20091218) + slides presented during today's Press conference

Credo, loyalty and royalty

I bumped into Joe Lieberman this morning:

For those who can't read the banner, there's a big "switching is easy" next to Joe's face, and below an invitation to join CREDO mobile : "more people are changing to CREDO mobile for reliable services and reliable values (NB : the "and" is not only bold - I mean the typo - but also underlined). We've been a loyal supporter of progressive causes since 1985".

Unfortunately, I didn't keep the M-VNO's campaign promising handcuffs for Karl Rove (see "CREDO mobile vs Karl Rove"), but I'm joining this comparative ad featuring W. as AT&T (it splashed over my computer screen a couple of days before one of the most glorious days in American history) :


Apparently, the Lieberm'ad has been running for a while, and was part of a scheme to strip America's most famous political weather vane of his Homeland Security Committee chairmanship*.

Everybody knows Joe The Switcher eventually kept his chair. This campaign is now focusing more than ever on promoting one cause : the CREDO brand.

Anyway, either by trickling down on its own, or because Working Assets have this thing for spreading it around, part of this wealth will end up benefiting other causes**.


* "Jaws (not calls) drop as Credo Mobile uses Lieberman’s mug in ad" (Chris Steller - Minnesota Independent - 20081124)

** I still don't know how many subscribers CREDO mobile have, but The Courage Campaign claims that they gathered over a week "200,000 signatures on a pledge to repeal" the Proposition 8 ("Join the Impact: California’s Prop 8 Discrimination Becomes a National Issue" - Rick Jacobs - The Courage Campaign / California Progress Report 20081116).

Carrefour MVNO : Taiwan before China ?

France, Belgium, Italy, Spain... Carrefour Mobile (1 mobile in its baby steps) started in the retailer's neighborhood.

Poland was the first major move eastwards.

Now Taiwan looks like a giant leap.

Of course, Carrefour is a major player on the island with about 60 hypermarkets and 4 M membership cardholders, and times are ripe for a low-end player. But that's a tough and saturated market with 3 existing MVNOs.

Of course, this is a 2G service. But customers can chose between prepaid and postpaid, and can enjoy a loyalty program (rewards : airtime now, store promotions later).

Of course, the phones don't look very smart. But the company created a SPV dedicated to the operation (name of the Special Purpose Vehicule : the usual "Carrefour Telecom").

The host network is the leader, Chunghwa Telecom. Chung Hwa happens to mean "China". Yes, like that neighboring country where Carrefour hypermarkets are not exactly under birth control restrictions.

So this is not yet the giant leap, but one can easily guess where it points to.

CREDO mobile vs Karl Rove

"Did your mobile phone support Karl Rove... or does it fight to put him behind bars, where he belongs?"

That's CREDO mobile's sales pitch in the "Handcuffs for Karl Rove, a Handset for You" e-mail I received this morning, courtesy democrats.com (as a matter of fact and as my blogules readers already noticed, I'm not exactly Karl Rove's #1 fan).

CREDO mobile is a MVNO on Sprint's network. It joined last year CREDO Long Distance and other services (credit cards) in an effort that - according to owner Working Assets - has raised $60M since 1985 for noble causes.

1% of all charges will go to Planned Parenthood, Rainforest Action Network, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Fair Vote, the Organic Farming Research Foundation, Wellstone Action!, Iraq War Wrong Way, Doctors Without Borders, Global Fund for Women, and McCain - Rice 2008 (well... I wouldn't bet a buck on that last one since allocations are made according to member polls).

"Join our existing members in sending over 80,000 letters and calls to Congress, the White House and corporate leaders each month", they say. Fine, but is there any other way of getting a rebate than including Dubya and Republican Representatives in my "Friends & Family" list ?

IKEA familymobile

There used to be one IKEA-style operator around not so long ago, but Tele2 didn't quite survive the death of its founder. So there is room for one of the last big names in retail to enter the mobile arena.

For the moment, familymobile is more about customer loyalty than about disrupting the whole market. And it is less about the IKEA brand than the IKEA FAMILY database.

Because IKEA wants to leverage on its IKEA FAMILY members (1.4M in the UK), build more recurrent business relationships with them, and convert more customers to this low budget but profitable club thanks to a basic but attractive offer (9p for calls, 6p for text, Pay As You Go Mobile SIM Card package through a partnership with M-VNO Mobile Partners UK Ltd on T-Mobile networks + a limited choice of handsets via 20:20 Logistics Limited, their distribution partners).

As IKEA puts it on its website (familymobile.com), "Family Mobile has a number of shared values with IKEA: High quality, Simple, Low price, Self service, The importance of family - and family values" ("Family values" including the family budget issues : master account + individual accounts, Automatic Top-up...).

The Swedish retailer (led by Danish M-VNO veterans for its brand new mobile arm) will start filling the pipes with all its UK staff members (9,500).

Cheap, smart and simple, efficient organization and logistics... the only parts missing in familymobile 1.0 are a touch of design and unpronuncable product names.

Helio lands on Virgin island

Brand with prepaid subs would seek added value services king with cool devices.

Virgin Mobile USA and fellow Sprint M-VNO Helio may tie the knot after SK Telecom failed to get Nextel for $5 bn (and cyworld to outperform MySpace).

A marketing wizzard, Korea's mobile leader is good at launching brands on the national market but building an international vehicle is a tremendous task. And investing in an ailing MNO on a huge / consolidating market would have been a waste of time and money.

Now SKT has both*, and it should focus on a relevant partner to give its platforms the global reach they deserve. And quick : Korea's new and US friendly president LEE Myung-bak just met with his new IT advisor : Bill Gates... Microsoft's dark period seems over in the country.

* even if it may lose after China Unicom sells its CDMA network to China Telecom - another blow abroad for SKT, which owns a little bit more than 6% of the MNO.

F-VNO : dead on AIRAVE all ?

A $49.99 Samsung CDMA femtocell with a $30 / month service for a household ($15 for individuals) including unlimited VoIP for all calls generated within the gizmo's reach (supposedly 5,000 square feet). In Denver and Indy right now and nationwide by the end of Dubya's second term, that's Sprint AIRAVE.

All Sprint customers can use your AIRAVE (3 at a time) but need to subscribe to the service to enjoy unlimited calls.

And oh. YOU provide the broadband access by cable or DSL.

The F-VNO (Femtocell VNO) is born.

M6 Mobile and Orange celebrate

2 years after launch and one year ahead of schedule, M6 Mobile by Orange hits the 1M mark (767,000 subs EOY 2006) and claims a new target of 1.5M EOY 2008. France's most succesful MVNO is not a MVNO but a JV wrapped around a licensing agreement targeting the younger generation (15-25).

France Telecom's Lombard and M6's Tavernost confess today to Le Figaro they have other plans in mind, but not in the soccer rights field. Yet. More good news for Canal+, under pressure by France's Pro League : the LFP wants to maintain its contract at a high price in spite of the recent merger of TPS with Canal Sat, but was recently deterred (by a court ruling) from switching from a 3 to a 5 year contract in order to attract more bidders. M6 recently snatched rights for not so minor events, including part of FIFA World Cup.

M6 just developped new threads to an already impressive web (M6 Web manages over 50 sites including M6.fr, the country's second audiovisual website in audience after TF1), both in the small ads field :

• atonservice.fr : students jobs focused on services to individuals, likely to feed M6 Mobile's core target, already under the spell of the M6 Group for music.
• a 34% participation in PagesJaunes Petites Annonces (a PagesJaunes Group subsidiary), bound to boost another of their major verticals : cars and motors.

The fun doesn't come from Orangeworld but from a partner more fit for the job and that's OK for FT : keeping youngsters is a tough job and the Orange brand is there, ready to help them switch to more serious applications when the time comes.

MVNOs take off in France

According to the French NRA, the ARCEP, the country reached a 82% penetration rate end of Q1 2007 with a total of 52M active accounts, including overseas regions and territories.
This base grew by 7% over the last 12 months : 4% for MNOs, and a solid 302% for M-VNOs, whose market share eventually took off from .91 to 3.42%. During Q1 2007, they even snatched 11.5% of net sales for prepaid and 15.8% for postpaid.
The percentage of users of multimedia services remained stable at 29%, and the number of SMS by active users at around 30 per month. But ARPU didn't nose dive (EUR 36.4 / month, -6%) because voice remained strong : traffic gained 14% and call termination wholesale cuts didn't kill the golden goose. But Viviane Reding's roaming wars haven't started yet. And French M-VNOs are not voice killers. Yet.
Even price-centric M-VNOs (ie Tele2 Mobile, over 350k subs) or mass retailers (Auchan Telecom, Carrefour mobile) can't go far. Data-centric Ten or M-VNOs with an ethnic / geographic focus (MobiSud, Breitz Mobile) won't bring the whole house down. Nor will such players as Coriolis or Transatel. "Entertainers" NRJ Mobile and Virgin Mobile play the card of rates a more subtle way, offering more for the same price. Both are enjoying a good position on the market (over 300k subs), the latter contributing to the success story of Omer Telecom, the Phone House / Carphone Warehouse VNO behind Breizh Mobile and the Virgin Mobile JV.
But triple- / quadplayers hold the best entry points as mobile voice rates start converging with landline ones, as mobile and landline start making one. neuf cegetel started ahead of Free Iliad, but Orange and SFR, now also an ISP, won't let their market share shrink that easily. The timing seems definitely interesting for the sale of Bouygues Telecom*.

* see "Bouygues not for sale ? How about TF1 ?" (20070509)

MVNO frenzy and extreme hangovers

Sprint welcomes another MVNO, and the utterly bankable KDDI Mobile brand has a crystal clear ambition : selling more Kyoceras in the US.
Meanwhile and closer to Japan, Google Phones are being made in Taiwan by HTC and cobranded by the MNO. The utterly bankable Google brand is definitely not meant to become a MVNO. Yet.
The so nineties Blyk concept is gathering an impressive pool of advertisers for its pan-European launch on Orange networks.
The so eighties Sonopia's DIY MVNO / MVNE concept is gathering an impressive media coverage. Get cool calling cards with your company's logo, grow as big as AT&T in less than two weeks... ego will sell this summer.
But the so Y2Ks WiFi - 3G PC Card concept doesn't sell : Helio Hybrid ends a partnership with Boingo going airbuso...
The MVNO primaries are definitely not over, but Amp'd clearly feels a Joementum - I don't have New Hampshire's figures (nor Canada's, for that matter), but this natural born winner is approaching the 200,000 subs mark (100,000 EOY 2006), with a 84% postpaid customer base (just slightly down from 89%), and ARPU remains strong at $100. Do you want the sign that says "purchase me right now" or the one that reads "wanted : Vegas wedding chapel" ?
Someone must clean this crowded place one way or the other, even the most extreme. Fortunately, ExtremeMob (extrememob.com) is not the mafia's MVNO but the result of a deal between Xebra Limited and Vodafone UK. This fall, Extreme Mobile Limited will target the X generation with all the Weapons of Mass Disruption of the Extreme Media Group (extrememediagroup.com) : Extreme Sports Channel, Ex Publishing, Extreme Entertainment (content), Ex Events, Extreme Retail and even Extreme Hotels, Extreme Parks, or Extronics. "ExtremeMob is more than just about extreme sports, it’s about being an integral part of the lifestyle of under 24’s". The handset shown in the press release goes with an extreme headset, and the said "under 24's" may go with an extreme hangover thanks to Xebra's Extreme Drinks.
ExtremeMob can claim the Pole position : Xebra was recently purchased by Centernet / NFI Midas.

UNOMobile, COOP and TIM : mobile sells in Italia

"Parlare di più, pagare di meno". Talk more, pay less ; that will be UNOMobile's moto. Is this Carrefour unit a full MVNO or only an ESP (Enhanced Service Provider) ? Anyway, another retailer is launching a MVNO in Italy : COOP will propose CoopVoce to its 6.5M members and their families (18M people overall), aiming for 1M subs in 3 years with a EUR 200 M turnover. CoopVoce will be hosted by TIM.

"Talk no more, unless I pay less". That could be the reason why AT&T declined the same TIM (through the Olympia-Pirelli-Telecom Italia cascade). But American Moviles and France Telecom (now with Morgan Stanley) remain in a shopping mood. For them, it could be "Parlare di più, pagare di piu".

"Parlare di più" ? Vodafone seems to perfectly understand the Italian MVNO dialect : Vodafone Italia will host both UNOMobile and Poste Italiane, and it is even using the same language to talk to fellow brits (BT aims at 10% of the biz market with its convergence offer, but needs a godfather to enter it).

* branded 1Mobile - with the same 1 as the group's trademark logo for its first price products (see unomobile.it - still at the "coming soon" stage).

Helio to hit 100k subs, and to be hit by Earthlink's 10K

According to Helio / Helio powered by SK Telecom, the Hollywood MVNO is "on the path to surpass 100,000 subscribers by early in the second quarter of 2007" (NB : 10 month after launch) and claims an "ARPU of over $100 per month", 25% of which from data services. The proof of concept for their device driven innovation strategy reads in some interesting figures :
- a WAP penetration of over 85%, an average 400 SMS per customer (merry Xmas - those were the stats for December 2006 so you won't get any data regarding the recent launch of Helio Music) - over 70% of Helio members use MySpace Mobile
- over 80% of Helio Drift members have downloaded GPS-enabled Google Maps™ for mobile and about 70% have downloaded Buddy Beacon


According to Earthlink's 10-K, Helio Inc as well as Helio LLC (the opco) are Delaware corporations. This isn't Tinsel Town and the balance sheets are not unleaded. Up to now, each partner has spent $214M in cash and non cash assets ($40M for Earthlink's 27,000 wireless subscribers transferred in 2005, along with equipments and other assets). Each partner will spend 6 more millions in August but beyond that, there is a big question mark.

One thing is sure : the company will keep losing money for a while. Big time, because this is cellular business and even for a M-VNO with a low CAPEX, S curves tend to develop fat bellies. FYI, 2006 revenues reached $46.58M with a full launch in July (68.7% service, 31.2% equipments and other) and accumulated deficit stood at $233.7M. Provided ARPU remains at the same high-usage-low-hanging-early-adopter level, 100,000 subs would mean $120M, and an average customer base of 150,000 over the year would barely match 2006 OPEX ($186.5M). Not only does EY have "substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern", but even a massive success of HELIO would only make things worse in the short term (acquisition costs).

SK Telecom and Earthlink own each 47.8% of the operation. Earthlink can't afford losing money at this pace for long, and SK Telecom could seize the opportunity to take a clearer lead. Or to bring in one ov'em "potential outside investors" (up to now, "outside investors" represented "approximately $8.0 million of funding").

At this stage and especially after the recent US-Korean FTA, I don't see SKT pulling the plug that early. Even with such a fierce competition, it wants HELIO to "achieve or maintain adequate market share or revenue or compete effectively". One one hand, we should see more "Helio powered by SK Telecom" (MySpace's exclusivity is over and the Cyworld brand could blossom beyond the platform). On the other, SKT won't wait 25 years to welcome HELIO's 3 millionth customer.

The fun is just about to start.

mAdSense and Google Phonies (Google Phones ?)

"Don't Be Evil" is embedded in Big G's DNA. They said we were the next Microsoft, they now say we are the next Apple. But we neither want to rule the hardware / OS entry point nor rule the hardware / DRM entry point. Do we ?
One thing is sure : if Google's plans remain evasive, their ambitions remain pervasive. And mobility a must have, whatever the path. Speculations, analysts and pundits keep fueling expectations (gPhone, WISP, M-VNO, VoIP, WiFi, WiMAX, mobile suites...), but Google shouldn't care about it.
... if it weren't for its shareholders... I don't want to spoil the party but $462 per share and $143 bn overall look like a lot of dough to me. Like that insane, neverending hike in the Vietnam stock exchange, not even dented by the Shanghai hiccup.
Come to think of it, the ultimate stage of mobile advertising by the king of online advertising will be called mAdSense.

What else ? The CeBIT is over. Which means it was open before. Talking about bomb news : cellcos are eventually realizing the golden years of mobile voice ARPU will soon be over and the bulk of mobile data is bound to go flat. At last.

What else ?
- BT and KPN are working on M-VNOs in Spain. Belgacom, Swisscom, Eircom declined to comment.
- Viviane Reding wants DVB-H to outperform Galileo and Airbus across and beyond Europe. China already decided to launch a competitor to Airbus and Boeing, another to 3GSM and cdma2000. Why not split from Europe over the GPS-killer / killee and why not launch a specific mobile.TV.cn ?
- The WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance (WiSOA) wants to promote both WiMAX roaming and the survival / resale of its exotic founders
- I'm still stuck with a broken foot and a broken club - I can't move and Paris Saint Germain keeps sinking towards second division. Mobility definitely sucks.