Vodafone Buys MVNO
With all the recent talk about MVNOs, here’s news that Vodafone is buying Singlepoint, one of the oldest mobile phone MVNOs, who mostly sells Vodafone service. So, here’s the question: if Singlepoint is already selling Vodafone service, then why does Vodafone need to swoop in and buy up Singlepoint? Basically, the idea is to cut out Singlepoint’s separate commission while (hopefully) keeping the customers. So, if that’s the case, why bother with an MVNO in the first place? The MVNO’s point is to market to a different subset of customers, but I guess Vodafone didn’t find that to be all that valuable in the case of Singlepoint, and instead, they discovered that they were competing against themselves. It will be interesting to see if other MVNOs end up with similar fates. In most cases, MVNOs like Virgin, at least, are providing an association with a bigger brand – something Singlepoint was not offering.
