Today, MVNOs can be found in Europe and America, but there is also strong interest from emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Projections on the market size for the year 2010 ranged from US$10 billion to US$30 billion, showing the enormity of the opportunity world-wide. And there are still opportunities for MVNOs to emerge in Spain and Portugal, where the regulator is providing strong support in 'vertical industry sectors' for data-only offerings, as well as in the corporate market.

The conference highlighted the most successful MVNOs as marketing companies that had analysed and segmented their markets in depth, identified a niche and designed a specific offering for it. However, not all brands were valid MVNO candidates, as their 'content' needed to be relevant to the mobile channel.

It also emerged that the next generation of MVNOs will base their offerings around 3G and Media, especially existing media companies that already offer content to a specific audience, or even a known customer base.

Despite the potential cannibalisation into the established customer base of mobile operators, the consensus was that MVNOs represent an opportunity for mobile services to be marketed better in saturated markets, and to expand their user base in unsaturated markets.

Delegates also heard that MVNOs should be regulated, but only to the extent that competition is increased. It was, therefore, recommended that mobile operators open up their networks and negotiate fair agreements without the intervention of the regulator.

Although MVNOs rely heavily on the technical know-how of the mobile operators or enablers (MVNE), technical challenges, such as mobile number portability and service provisioning, need to be addressed.

In emerging markets, the few successful MVNOs have, so far, been innovators that knew exactly where they were going before starting. The main challenges are still cost efficiency, low ARPU, network capacity, low innovation, competitive market and a lack of regulatory framework. However, the markets are so large and the total penetration still so low that plenty of scope remains for deeper segmentation.

In conclusion, the challenge for MVNOs is to keep costs low, spend heavily on marketing and gain market share, rapidly. The cost of voice services will keep going down, advertising will be the key revenue stream, and applications will become differentiators. The MVNO market is already maturing, so success depends on meaningful partnerships, differentiation, segmentation, building of a strong brand fast and superior customer care.

Full highlights of the conference can be found on the web site of our research partner, Sagnard Marketing Associates, at: www.sagnard.biz.

© Norbert Sagnard, SMA, "MForum.ru"