Comments on: Prepaid Rules

By: tracfone

tracfone — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:45:07 +0000

I agree with you that low price is not a long term biz model, but the targeting of specific niches also proved unsuccessful. Hence ESPN mnvo and Disney mvno both failed. I do think however that the elderly niche could still do well. They mainly need simple to use phones without the frills.

By: Mobile Opportunity - News And Views from Google MO » Blog Archive » Carnival of the Mobilists #70: Is RIM stupid or lying?

Sat, 24 May 2008 11:58:39 +0000

[...] Jason Devitt at Skydeck, a mysterious new mobile startup, contributes a very interesting post on the fate of MVNOs. He argues that the high-profile MVNOs targeting lucrative customers are [...]

By: Virgin Territory | Skydeck

Virgin Territory | Skydeck — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:37:43 +0000

[...] I wrote about the virtues of prepaid MVNOs a few weeks ago, I did not know that Virgin Mobile was about to file to go public. I’ve been [...]

By: ES

ES — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:23:29 +0000

However competing purely on price is not a long term business model especially as the price of voice and text messaging continually declines. In addition the potential introduction of flat rate tariffs will put further pressure on these ‘no-frills’ MVNOs. Those that target specific niches such as ethnic groups, sports fans, elderly …etc and can build a strong loyal customer base should have a better chance of survival in the long term.

By: Matthew Stecker

Matthew Stecker — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 16:01:34 +0000

We’re seeing a squeeze from *both* ends. The largest MVNOs have had their well publicized issues, but even the smaller guys who peddle vanilla prepaid to market segments not traditionally touched by the carriers are having problems. Cheif among these is the fact that the carriers themselves are creating prepaid offerings that compete directly with their MVNOs. Cingular’s GoPhone, for example, has grown substantially at the direct expense of vanilla Cingular resellers.