Competition is growing, and MVNOs must square the circle of offering something extra while offering value for money, a panel of experts told MVNO Nation Live attendees.

• The MVNO model is shifting, with growth in post-paid and value-added services
• Price competition is intense and the value market remains significant
• MVNOs that offer ‘more than just mobile’ are more likely to prosper in the long run
• MVNOs have an opportunity to position themselves as digital brands, tapping markets including IoT and travel eSIM
• Operators can tap AI to deliver a superior customer experience

Growth, diversity and competition were the key themes in the evolution of the MVNO business in the run-up to MVNO Nation Live, according to Pablo Iacopino, Head of Research and Commercial Conitent, GSMA Intelligence, who kicked off the opening panel debate at the event: What’s Next for MVNOs? Innovation, Shifts & New Frontiers.

Recapping some of the data points from his opening presentation, Iacopino said that the number of MVNOs globally had doubled in the last 10 years. Those MVNOs operate diverse business models, and Iacopino said that “diversity is growing” with MVNOs increasingly seeking to differentiate their businesses by means other than price.

“Now MVNOs are targeting the roaming business, IoT, retail and media, so there is diversity – and because of that, the billing mix is shifting. In the past, most MVNOs had a prepaid model. Now contract is as big as prepaid,” he said.

Iacopino said that proliferation of eSIMs – the topic of his opening keynote – was key stimulant for further growth of the MVNO market, citing the statistic that over 600 MVNOs offered eSIMs at the time of the event, including 52 eSIM-only operators. He said GSMA Intelligence had counted 97 ‘full MVNOs’ – operators that own their own core infrastructure – at large in the world. Overall, these numbers mean that there are 2.4 MVNOs (of all stripes) to each MNO.

Value seekers and travel eSIMs

From a UK perspective, Nick Wootten, MVNO Director at BT Wholesale, which provides the infrastructure for multiple MVNOs, said that the “value market” – where competition remains focused on price – was still growing, accounting for about 30% of the overall market. Of the UK’s ‘value seekers’, about half were MVNO customers and half were customers of MNO sub-brands, he said. BT itself has no skin in the value segment game (consumer arm EE is seen as a premium brand and BT does not have any sub-brands of its own), so it is “important that we partner with MVNOs in this space”, Wootten said.

Regarding more differentiated players, Wootten said he was seeing growth in the travel eSIM market, and BT’s own network data provided further evidence of the potential of this market. “We’ve also seen growth in traditional in-bound roaming with people coming onto the EE network roaming from abroad. That tells us that the travel MVNO market is increasing the overall volume of consumers using mobile networks,” he said.

Wootten said he believed that the travel eSIM was winning converts who had previously either bought a local physical SIM or simply relied on WiFi when abroad. “They’re now more likely to be familiar with the concept of having a second eSIM for their own purposes,” he said.

Differentiation in the value segment

Also speaking on the panel, Gary McCready, Commercial and Strategy Director, ID Mobile, the low-cost UK MVNO operated by the Currys consumer electronics retail chain, said his company targeted value-conscious customers, but maintained that differentiation was still possible within that category.

“Part of it is value for the family or the home. So rather than think about an individual customer, we think about the customer lifetime value,” he said. “Because we’re an MVNO and not that well-known – although we’ve got over two million subscribers – we find a lot of customers come to our electrical stories and have never heard of us,” said McCready. Once they try the concept out, they are willing to get a eSIM-enabled phone for the family while retaining their existing device.

“For me, it is about making sure you get the right things perfect and seamless for the customer. Then you can build different pieces on and make a value-add that is genuine and sincere, such as offering cybersecurity protection for the device.”

More than mobile

Salman Tariq, VP Europe and Africa at billing specialist Optiva, said that “the fundamentals of MVNO success haven’t changed that much. However, he added, the lessons of the previous 12-24 months had shown that there was “obviously a lot more reward if you can scale to certain level”.

There had been sizeable M&A deals around the world in the MVNO sector, he said, adding that companies that are “about more than just mobile” with a multi-region approach are best placed to dominate. However, achieving scale is the key ingredient to build future success.

Taking up the “more than just mobile” theme, Deepak Gusain, COO of online payment specialist Cartex, said that MVNOs seeking to break out of the “walled garden of voice and data” needed to aim to create an ecosystem that enables the delivery of multiple services.

“For example, a migrant population in the UK will want to send money back home and will also want to consume content from home. How the wider ecosystem is being enabled is an area of growth for MVNOs – especially in payments and remittances,” he said. Gusain said he expected MVNOs – both new and established – to target this area going forwards.

MVNOs, he said, had an opportunity to establish themselves in the payment world by launching their own branded cards within their apps to make and receive payments.

Digital brand

GSMA Intelligence’s Iacopino expanded on the theme, identifying an MVNO strategy of establishing a ‘digital brand’ as a powerful example of market positioning. “In my opinion, this is the way to go to the consumer market. Consumer segmentation is now more important than ever. We are moving from selling services to selling a user experience,” he said.

Iacopino said that the ability to segment the consumer base would allow MVNOs to target specific groups of consumers who may be interested in gaming or video streaming of some other application.

He said he also believed that MVNOs had an opportunity to capture a slice of the emerging IoT market by targeting enterprises as well as individual consumers. He said enterprises could invest up to 10% of their revenue in the pursuit of digital transformation. While digital hyperscalers and system integrators were the “top candidates” to make the most of this opportunity, there was no reason why MVNOs couldn’t capture a significant share of the market.

Taking up this point, Cartex’s Gusain said he believed MVNOs specifically had an opportunity to capture a share of the consumer (rather than the enterprise) IoT market, highlighting the need to build new revenue streams quickly – something that may not be possible in the broader IoT space.

The IoT market

The call for MVNOs to take a slice of the IoT market was enthusiastically echoed by ID Mobile’s McCready – but like Gusain, he believed that the opportunity would be in the consumer market.

“I want somebody to come into a Currys electrical store, with one app, and be able to control every device and every piece of kit in the whole store,” he said. More broadly, McCready said he believed that getting consumers to sign up to subscription services was the key route to growth, with an understanding of the needs of the household at the heart of how MVNOs could differentiate their offerings.

“We want to be the first point of contact for the consumer,” he said, giving the MVNO the opportunity to become the gateway for consumers to access many other products and services.

This enhanced positioning of the MVNO as gateway to a wider world of digital services implies a high degree of trust. In this context, the rise of eSIM can play a role by providing a superior way to authenticate users and secure payments, making it easier. BT’s Wootten said he believed MVNOs had an opportunity to capture a part of emerging wholesale business, tapping the authentication power of eSIMs as part of that.

Alternative infrastructure

Beyond the scope of applications and services, going “beyond mobile” could also apply to the infrastructure MVNOs use to deliver a growing range of services. Optiva’s Tariq said that while MVNOs have until now been locked into taking capacity from MNOs, the arrival of Low-Earth Orbit satellite connectivity and High-Altitude Platform Stations offered an opportunity to break free to some extent. “If you’re looking to be a provider with global scale, global coverage could be an option – there are some good early examples of satellite and IoT players coming together,” he said.

Adding a note of caution amid the enthusiasm for new revenue-enhancing applications, Gusain said that there was “no single killer service” for telcos. However, he added that MVNOs do have a significant opportunity to play a role in the emerging AI economy, not only as users of AI across their operations and products but as creators of AI.

“I don’t think they can be the real shapers of the AI economy – because they lack scale – but there are obviously use cases where they can perfect AI for their own segment that could be used across the wider market,” he said.

AI and innovation

Other speakers agreed. Iacopino said that three key areas of innovation – eSIM, AI and 5G – could be leveraged to develop a much better user experience, and BT’s Wootten expressed his enthusiasm for AI as a tool to help operators predict which customers are likely to churn as well as one that could enable much more granular personalisation of offers.

Wootten added that it was important for MVNOs and MNOs alike to be “value creative and not value destructive”, so any new business model adopted by MVNOs should not include a race to the bottom. “Every MVNO needs an MNO, and if MNOs that are investing billions every year can’t make it work everyone will suffer,” he warned.

There is however evidence from the growth themes highlighted at the event that MVNO providers know they must add rather than subtract value, and developing the digital gateway concept appears to be central to their vision of how to go about this.

Gusain highlighted the lack of engagement around MVNOs’ own apps on mobile devices compared with social media, messaging, videoconferencing and email apps. MVNOs, he said, have an opportunity to bring their own customer to their own apps if they can create “a differentiated experience of additional services”, adding that he thought a combination of fintech and mobile would be “the winning mix”.

This is one chapter from Beyond Connectivity: The Future of MVNOs, our eBook covering insights from MVNO Nation Live 2025.

Want the full picture? Download the complete eBook here

Want to be part of the conversation? Join us at MVNO Nation Europe 2026, 3-5 November in Alicante, Spain, where many of the voices featured in this eBook return to explore these themes in person.