The mobile industry is sprinting at a hundred miles an
hour in ten different directions. Among other things, it is becoming
the world's most important internet service provider, a seriously
important channel for media distribution, the best billing system on
the planet, a distributed organisation and communication system in
repressive societies, a platform for application developers, a
corporate email provider and a transnational banking and money transfer
system.
An industry destined to transform so many sectors of the economy needs
thousands of players, with a tough, scrappy free-for-all among
entrepreneurs feeding the occasional battle-tested survivor into the
big league. Right now, all we have is a succession of stale geographic
duopolies or triopolies (yes, I invented that word), and the sooner
that situation goes away, the better.
That's why I am pretty interested in this CommsMEA story, on the launch of the third "virtual" mobile network in Oman....
This one is in partnership with the MBC television network, and has some kind of special proposition for young Arabic-speakers. I'll try and find out more about this today, but until then, allow me
to rant a little bit about why I think these kind of "virtual" networks
are super important for the industry.
Today we think of mobile networks as these giant clunky monolithic
corporations with thousands of employees and billions in revenues. But
that is just a relic, a quirk of an industry that is forced by
regulators to tie up its infrastructure side with the service side.
You can get a thousand different types of credit card, from every bank
on the planet, some branded with the logo of an airline or supermarket.
But there is really just a few global credit card networks. The
infrastructure of the industry (the Visa / Mastercard networks, etc)
has been decoupled from the service providers, who can make niche
products like my Etihad visa card that gives me frequent flier miles
for all the dollars I spend.
The point is, when you split infrastructure from services, really
interesting little business models can emerge. Some will flourish, most
will die, but good ideas quickly rise to the surface and become
mainstream.
That is why the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) should be the
business model of the future for the mobile industry. I've written lots
about MVNOs before, but in short, the idea is that you buy wholesale
minutes of access to an existing network like Etisalat or du, and then
resell them through your own branded "network".
It's a lightweight, low-barriers model for little innovative businesses
to get into the market with a targeted service and/or experimental
business model. You can offer a free, advertising supported service
like Blyk in the UK, or a high-end luxury service like Nokia/Vertu in
Japan. You can target expatriate workers, like Friendi does in Oman,
and in the same breath, also target Gulf nationals and Arabic speakers,
as Friendi/MBC are now doing with their new network.
Please, telecom regulators, can we have some more?
Letting a hundred virtual mobile networks blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend...
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