Apr 1, 2005 12:00 PM

VICE PRESIDENT AND COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA PRACTICE LEADER, A.T. KEARNEY

Management consulting firm A.T. Kearney and its vice president and communications and media practice leader, Andrew Cole, have so far helped midwife the births of four mobile virtual network operators, most recently advising Sky Dayton on the upcoming launch of his SK-Earth-Link (see March 2005 issue). Following a flurry of new MVNO announcements that includes fledgling carriers Amp'd Mobile and Movida, Wireless Review spoke to Cole about the surging market and why so many network operators are now slicing off their piece of the MVNO pie.

More on this Topic

Industry News

Blogs

Briefing Room

On segmentation: There is now universal agreement that wireless has evolved dramatically from a generic voice market to one that is highly segmented. We've noted through our research that every single carrier is strong in certain segments and weak in others. That's universal — it doesn't matter which carrier you're talking about. That's taken some carriers a lot of time to come to terms with and to agree with.

On capturing new markets: When we helped Bell Mobility with its MVNO strategy, it became very clear through customer analysis that there are at least seven sub-segments of the youth market. There were at least two sub-segments that it was clear would reject Bell Mobility and Bell Canada, period, and there was nothing they could do. The brands were associated with their parents, and these strong associations were all negative. In that case, Bell Mobility is absolutely going to grab [an MVNO] because it's the only way to penetrate that segment.

On the current MVNO boom: It would be wrong to assume that carriers that support MVNOs will, by default, support any MVNO. There's going to be a very selective support strategy that depends on segments, geography and a lot of elements that the carriers deem appropriate. This is not a universal ‘yes’ to all MVNOs.

On the future of MVNOs: Sprint has shown that in a high-capex industry, you have to think about return on investment. It's very financially astute to manage a network with a wholesale element. All carriers except for T-Mobile and Alltel are convinced that MVNOs should be supported, and I suspect even that's going to change.