The 4 things you need to think about before starting your own mobile brand

Starting a mobile brand (and selling your own branded SIM cards) is an exciting and lucrative venture.

Some businesses enjoy a “zero-touch” mobile brand (or, mobile virtual network operator) and collect the additional revenue without any thoughts on customer service, payments, regulators, or integrations.

Other businesses like to be deeply involved with their MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) and integrate the back-end with their other suite of products and services.

In this article, we will be outlining the top 4 things you need to think about before starting your own mobile brand.

1. Set your budget

Specifying your budget upfront will stop the guessing game between you and your chosen network partner. This can be anything between $25k and $150k+ (US$18k and US$100k+).

The most common MVNO launch setups are:

Entry

An entry-level MVNO is significantly more advanced than it sounds. This is a fully-functioning MVNO brand with account management, payments, calls, messaging, data, etc and is fully branded. Entry-level MVNOs compete with the big players and can be market disruptors.

The best thing about the entry-level is, it’s a minimum investment allowing you to prove your business plan, and you can expand integrations and add more advanced features down the road. Many established companies who add mobile to their product arsenal usually start with this budget.

Integrated

An integrated MVNO can be light-touch, or more advanced depending on your business needs. Do you already have a digital customer onboarding journey that you would like to integrate? Did you have a loyalty system to integrate with?

Integrating to your existing systems provides a seamless experience with your existing user journey, and you can always upgrade to integrated from entry.

Bespoke

A bespoke MVNO is for companies that have very specific needs for their mobile brand. Are you an ISP or similar and already have a billing and charging system that requires significant integration? Do you require a migration of your existing customer-base from a legacy platform? Do you have your own mobile network components?

For a majority of bespoke onboardings, the business has existing experience in telecommunications.

If none of the above options are within budget, you could alternatively become a reseller of an existing network.

2. Clarify your target market

Who will you sell your mobile plans to, will your mobile brand have a niche? Do you have an existing customer base that you will cross-sell to?

Something to understand here is… there are two types of MVNOs

1. An MVNO that knows the niche market that it wants to target. For example, if there are international travellers or residents that want affordable calls to their home country (like our Lebara Mobile brand).

2. An MVNO that is an addition to an existing brand. Like an ISP. This brand will target the existing customer base, or target a new customer base to bring into the ISP product, or both.

The targeted customers for each of these MVNOs will be very different from one another.

3. Build a rollout plan

The obvious things like a website, socials, advertising, and distribution. Your network partner will be able to guide you through all of this.

For distribution, will you sell SIM packs in your physical stores, or will this be a completely online product? Do you want to handle the logistics of your SIM cards? Do you want to sell eSIMs (electronic SIMs) and physical SIMs (pSIM)?

These questions are good to understand as early as possible, as certain SIM cards have a long wait time due to being a manufactured product.

4. Find the right mobile network partner

Countries have at least one mobile network operator, some 6 and above. Each carrier has one or more wholesale network partners. You need to find a carrier that has a low price for onboarding, a proven track record of successful and long-running MVNOs, and the fastest launch date. 

Your network partner should take care of all of the technical and regulatory responsibilities so you can focus on sales and marketing. For help on the questions to ask a network operator before starting your own mobile brand, stay tuned for our upcoming article on that.

Understanding and answering the points above will help streamline your selection process with your network partner for the launch of your new mobile brand!

If you would like to launch your own MVNO brand, or if you are an MNO and are interested in having the IMZI MVNO solution on your network, get in touch with our experienced team.

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