The buzz and fuzz of MWC 2024 have now subsided; it is history. We walked for miles, talked to numerous people, and observed countless stands, but what have we truly learned?
As an MVNO, you are interested in increasing your ARPU, ensuring customer satisfaction (thus reducing churn), streamlining processes, and ultimately finding new revenue streams. So, how do MWC’s buzzwords translate into the world of MVNOs?
Here are our takeaways:
Gen AI is on the rise (it was very difficult to miss). This class of AI not only assists with analytics, chatbots, and churn prevention but can also generate new content, including images, text, audio, and even video, that mimics the style and characteristics of the data on which it was trained. This entails upgraded billing solutions, hyper-personalised customer experiences, more opportunities for monetisation, and further cost reduction. As generative AI continues to advance, MVNOs will continue to explore new use cases and opportunities to leverage this technology to drive innovation and gain a competitive advantage in the telco industry.
Private networks and network slicing are becoming more popular. With the rollout of 5G steadily advancing, case studies of private networks have become increasingly widespread. Overall, private networks can offer you a compelling opportunity to differentiate your offerings, capture new market segments, and drive revenue growth by delivering customized, secure, and high-performance connectivity solutions tailored to the unique needs of your customers. Private networks enable you to diversify your revenue streams by targeting high-value enterprise customers with specialized connectivity solutions. By tapping into industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and utilities, MVNOs can capture new market segments and unlock additional revenue opportunities beyond traditional consumer-focused services.
Operators are busy tackling their issues of rising network expenditures related to the rollout of 5G networks but also moving to the cloud. There wasn't much optimism from the speakers that this will be addressed in the coming years. This implies that operators will be focusing their efforts and resources on digitalisation, leaving little room for innovation and targeted offerings for niche customers, thereby creating space for MVNOs. Additionally, the rising costs for operators mean that to fill the revenue gap, they will seek further cooperation with their wholesale partners, and it so happens that MVNOs are often the biggest revenue generators in the wholesale departments. Our conclusions might seem far-fetched, but we expect a new wave of enhanced cooperation from operators.
The new eSIM specifications for IoT, iSIM, and the arrival of new IoT technologies (e.g. RedCap, satellite/cellular integration) lead to the emergence of a new IoT ecosystem with new products and solutions aiming for global coverage. GSMA predicts that eSIM and iSIM usage will double between now and 2023. This means immense opportunities for MVNOs to tap into new markets, providing for smart cities, healthcare, media, agriculture, logistics, etc., where the demand for the two is rising. The new eSIM specifications are expected to tackle the eSIM issues in the IoT space and finally enable the traffic and volumes required to make this business truly profitable and scalable.
MVNOs are driving eSIM for international roaming, and the number of new players in the last year surprised everyone. There are still untapped opportunities to partner in this space, and what is uplifting is that the MVNOs in this space choose to cooperate with other MVNOs rather than operators, creating a new global interconnectivity.
This is merely a summary, and we will delve into all of these topics during our MWC Recap Virtual Forum taking place on the 16th of April at 2 pm BST. Don’t miss out!