The MVNO era begins!

cellcom

The calcalist published yesterday a rumour, saying that Cellcom is preparing strategic plans in order to be ready for The MVNO reform. For those who don’t remember or prefer to repress, the Ministry of communication is trying to start the MVNO services for several years – without any success till now.

Maybe the fact that Cellcom is actually doing something in this direction means that their assessment is the MVNO’s will finally appear by the end of the year (matching the promise of the Minister).

Now, the move itself. According to the calcalist, Cellcom plans to launch a new youth brand that will operate  in an MVNO model, but will remain a part of Cellcom. It’s not quiet clear what will be the difference of such an MVNO from the regular youth brands we are familiar with.

I must say that the situation in Israel regarding youth brands is much different from all other markets I know. While on majority of mobile markets we can see at least a few youth-positioned brands, in Israel we have none. The only youth brand – Esc, operated by Pelephone was shut down a few years ago due to a sharp decline of its popularity. I was thinking what is the reason of such a difference and apparently Cellcom was thinking about this issue to. I must admit that I’ve no answer – let’s wait and see if Cellcom has.

And if speaking about youth oriented MVNO – I’ve a nice example. A few months ago TIM Italy has launched a virtual operator named MTV Mobile. As it’s understandable from the name, MTV mobile is a joint venture of TIM and MTV Italy. The business model looks very much like what Cellcom wants to do. MTV mobile is positioned as an independent MVNO with content (music, games), messaging and Internet specialities.

To end this post, I’ve only one thing to say: if Cellcom airs commercials as funny as MTV mobile does – that will be enough for me. Here are some of them…enjoy!