MVNOs must define a purpose that goes beyond price competition, according to a panel of experts at MVNO Nation Live.

• MVNOs need to identify a USP other than price
• Market challenges can open the door to innovation – such as crowdsourcing customer care
• Operators need to choose the right partners to deliver a compelling customer value proposition

The unifying theme of the first day of MVNO Nation Live 2025 was how to build a unique proposition to compete other than as a low-cost alternative to MNOs.

The panel debate Redefining Customer-Centric Innovation: How Leading MVNOs Create Must-Have Offerings kicked off with the example of one MVNO that strived to build an emotional link with its US subscriber base – Love Mobile. Koddi Dunn, Co-Founder and CEO, told attendees that her company was “the phone company that gives back” in the form of support for local education, the environment, community services and – a unique twist – pet adoption and care.

She said the company’s mission was “not about saving an extra dollar or two” on bills but to “create a movement [and] community” where “people are vested in what we are building” on an emotional level.

Dunn said she was looking for consumers who “care about education, the environment, community services and pet adoption and that creates loyalty and that’s why we are different”

Not on price

Bernard Szederkenyi, Head of Digital Product Strategy at leading Canadian MNO Telus, which also operates two MVNO sub-brands, Public Mobile and Koodo, agreed that MVNOs must define a purpose that goes beyond the cutthroat world of price competition. “You really have to be conscious about what exactly is going to differentiate you, because if you enter the market with the sole purpose of making enough to sell out to a large telco, I think it will not lead to the outcome you are looking for,” he said.

Szederkenyi was keen to quash the notion that Mint Mobile, the Ryan Reynolds-backed US MVNO that was subsequently sold to T-Mobile for US$1.3bn and which has to some extent served as a poster child for what is possible, had been a success prior to the star’s involvement with it.

“Mint Mobile was not successful,” he said. Reynolds’ acquisition of his 25% stake in the company and transformation of its profile is not something that could easily be replicated, he added.

Susan Sorensen, Senior Business development Director, Plintron USA, an aggregator in the US that also acts as an MVNE globally, seconded the motion that MVNOs need to find their niche or target market (“whether that’s fintech or giving back to the community”) rather than competing on price and chasing those who switch frequently in search of the best deal.

“Everyone wants to become an MVNO, but it’s not easy,” she said, adding that operators need to build an ecosystem, decide whether to have a device offering and figure out what they want to do across a range of variables.

Crowdsourcing customer care

Having identified a target market or niche, the hard work of delivering the proposition begins. John Hayes, CEO of telecom SaaS provider MDS Global, said it was important for MVNOs to choose partners that understand their goals and will work alongside them for the long haul to deliver their value proposition.

“It’s really about being able to pull the customer value proposition together, delivering the value and making sure it’s aligned with the needs of the target market,” he said. For Telus’ Szederkenyi, a key element in the context of MVNOs that typically have fewer resources at their disposal as large well-financed MNOs is to focus innovation on areas where it makes an immediate difference to the proposition.

“When we launched our MVNO, our CEO said, ‘I want you to generate the same margin as the main brand’,” he recalled. “With lower prices it’s very difficult to [do that] without thinking about taking costs out of your business, and for most MVNOs one of the costs is support.”

To reduce support costs while maintaining loyalty among the MVNO’s base, he said, Telus’s low-cost MVNO Public Mobile became one of the first mobile operators to make use of crowdsourcing to provide customer service. The company introduced a gamification incentive scheme where the relatively small minority of enthusiasts who participated could earn points by providing advice to their fellow customers, which they could subsequently redeem for a free handset. He said a core group of ‘mobile masters’ had continued to provide support some 10 years down the track.

Power of referrals

Taking up the crowdsourcing theme, Sorensen hailed the role of customer referrals – and the importance of retaining the loyalty of those making them – for MVNOs.

Given the cost of subscriber acquisition, MVNOs have an incentive to retain the loyalty of those making referrals that benefit them. That could mean giving periodic free access to the network (not however a one-off free pass that would incentivise them to leave in search of the next best deal when the free period expired).

Sorensen said she believed that offering periodic free or discounted access or a points system where points could be redeemed for a new device could work effectively both to nurture subscriber recruitment and to fight churn.

Telus’ Szederkenyi agreed that customer referrals were an underused way to acquire new subscribers, particularly if new customers can be incentivised to spread the word. “We looked at how we could create the best experience When new customers come on board, there is a honeymoon period. Try to connect with them at that moment,” he said. “We in the telco business are in a very fortunate position. The umbilical cord between us and the user is the phone. You can communicate with your base.”

Szederkenyi said that in the case of Telus’ second MVNO brand, youth-oriented Koodo, new customers were sent an SMS asking if they would recommend the brand to their friends and family. He said this SMS generated a 45% response rate. The 90% who responded positively received a C$30 credit to gift to friends and family who signed up. (Those who responded negatively received a customer service call asking them about their experience, which Szederkenyi said established trust and converted those users to positive advocates.)

Further, Koodo repeated the exercise with customers 90 days, six months and 18 months into their time with the operator. These requests produced a diminishing rate of positive responses and referrals, but Szederkenyi said this was still a highly useful exercise as it provided data that allowed the operator to contact customers deemed likely to churn.

Role of AI

The panel discussion touched on the potential role of AI in building loyalty and reducing churn. MDS Global’s Hayes suggested there was a great opportunity to tap Generative AI to reduce the cost of customer support, not only as a first line to troubleshoot problems but as an acquisition tool by enabling onboarding and eSIM activation. “Having virtual assistants be able to create content and guide people through the processing the right tools with the right messages at the right time is really exciting,” he said.

Telus’ Szederkenyi proffered a cautionary view that, while the technology is improving, it has yet to “catch up with the hype”, but conceded that an earlier generation of virtual assistants had ultimately enabled the operator to cut costs.

“Sometimes customers don’t know what they want, and we also believe in hard nudges. That is a term that we use when we don’t actually give choice to the user to facilitate the outcome that we want, which in the long term is good for us as it is for the customer,” he said.

This meant employing virtual assistants to inform customers that they had no choice but to interact with the operator online, where they could also request a callback if the agent failed to solve the issue. The operator was ultimately able to take out C$10m of costs, he said.

“AI from a customer perspective is still not something people like. However, the next step, which maybe will hold greater value, is agentic AI,” he said. Instead of a bot telling a customer what to do, an AI agent could perform the required task.

Koddi Dunn, Co-Founder & CEO of Love Mobile offered the cautionary note that operators should beware of the environmental impact of AI but added that her company also saw upskilling its own user base in the use of the technology as another facet of its community-focused approach to selling mobile services.

To that end, Love Mobile had partnered with the Grow with Google digital skills and training programme to provide AI skills certification to customers – another initiative that also helped achieve that key goal of any MVNO – cementing the loyalty of the base.

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.