The Helio announcement from earlier today provides a nice lead-in to yet another story I’ve been meaning to write up from CTIA. Part of the reason Helio can innovate all these services is that they’re not reliant on the operator from whom they’re buying airtime, nor a traditional MVNE (that’s mobile virtual network enabler), for their back-end systems, they’ve got their own from SK Telecom.

At CTIA, I talked to Blueslice Networks, which sells its HLR and HSS (a couple of network elements) to virtual operators that enable them to offer more than your typical no-frills, low-cost MVNO, and to offer some real service differentiation. The MVNO space’s biggest problem is that you’ve got far too many operators that are really only competing on price. They may mask themselves by saying they target a particular demographic, then dress up with some special ringtones or content services, but very few offer anything much different from any other, or any physical operator. That’s what will bring on the implosion of the MVNO market, and those that don’t offer any unique services will find it hard to compete, and ultimately, survive.

Blueslice’s products allow for a lot of interesting services, particularly when it comes to roaming and fixed-mobile convergence. For instance, subscribers can have local numbers across networks in multiple countries tied to a single profile in the HLR, and a callback server can be thrown into the mix, allowing users to cut costs significantly. It wasn’t too surprising, then, to see United Mobile, an MVNO which exists solely to offer users global roaming services, announce a deal with Blueslice.

Competing on price is well and good, but it’s the MVNOs that can differentiate and compete on services that are going to succeed.

[tags]mobile, mvno, virtual operators, blueslice, helio[/tags]

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