The opportunity to increase retail and content engagements may offset the cost for some of the big consumer brands, but it still doesn’t address the complexity of managing the customer experience. Even though some of the wholesale models provide support and systems, MVNOs still have to figure out how to efficiently and accurately sell to, bill and manage their customers.

The MVNO enablers

One of the first places MVNOs can look to ease their entrance into the market is their host MNO. Many incumbents offer comprehensive systems and support offerings as part of their MVNO package. In the press release announcing its Single Source Enablement offering, Sprint stated:

“Single Source Enablement can cover all systems, processes, customer care, online Web enablement, and the warehousing and distribution of devices so an MVNO can focus almost solely on acquiring customers. The model can be customized to meet each MVNO’s unique business needs. Specialized customer loyalty programs and other value-added products can be supported under this model.”

While offerings like these may look attractive, they tend to come at a higher cost, potentially making already thin margins even thinner. However, the intent to enable MVNOs to focus on the acquisition of customers is essential. In January the Besen Group, an international consulting company that specializes in MVNO enablement, circulated its list of nine key success factors for 4G MVNOs, almost half of which related to the acquisition of customers.

Independent software vendors (ISVs) and platform providers, many of which possess an invaluable legacy within the traditional telecom market, have also jumped into the MVNO game. Coupled with the momentum of cloud services, a number of them have begun to offer cloud-based SaaS and hosted or managed software models that enable MVNOs and mobile virtual network enablers (MVNEs) to leverage their solutions at a fraction of the cost of traditional implementation, allowing for lower risk and faster time-to-market.

“The MVNO market is the natural evolution of the competitive nature of the mobile marketplace, and we see the opportunity as quite large,” says Lucas Skoczkowski, CEO of Redknee Solutions, a communications technology provider that’s had a tremendous amount of recent success enabling MVNOs in markets around the world.

“We have tailored our solutions to ensure our customers can leverage the best of our technology in whatever model makes the most sense for them, providing the efficiency they need and enable them to mine the critical data so that they can tailor their offerings quickly and easily to their customers. MVNOs need both to effectively thrive, and legacy solutions don’t work well within the delicate MVNO environment.”

By using communications technology solutions like Redknee’s, MVNOs can leverage their expertise and that of their partner ecosystem to generate a suite of best-of-breed solutions that are pre-integrated and have years of telco experience already baked in.

“We selected Redknee’s billing and customer-care solution because it provides a rich, out-of-the-box offering, which supports our entire business operation for customer acquisition, care and retention and ensures that we will deliver a high-quality customer experience,” said Step Up Mobile’s Joe Mallahan in a Redknee press release last fall. “In addition, the business model that Redknee’s cloud-based, end-to-end managed solution offers will enable us to launch to the market quickly with minimal risk.”

Platform providers like Microsoft Corporation are also getting behind vendors such as Redknee to provide the foundation for their solutions and integration into complementary products like Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

“What’s important to Microsoft is that we provide the platform on which our partner ecosystem can innovate,” says Bonnie Jeanne Maher, the company’s industry managing director for telecommunications. “Solutions built on Microsoft’s carrier-grade platform give MVNOs the reliability they need and provide a comprehensive suite of products that allows providers to take advantage of the rich, industry-specific technology. We bring ease of use, experience and efficiency to the communications industry and tailor our platform to the specific market so our partners can better focus on acquiring and serving their customers.”

The new MVNO frontier

Like any new frontier, there are challenges and pitfalls that need to be navigated. With MVNOs, spectrum, device availability, regulatory restrictions, and lack of funding and expertise are just a few to consider. However, with new markets coming online all the time, and offerings that elevate complications but reduce time-to-market, the opportunity may simply be too great to ignore.