MuniWireless

The French competition authority Conseil de la concurrence (equivalent of the FTC in the US) wants the government to ease regulations governing mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) to increase competition in the mobile telephony market, which is dominated by SFR, Orange and Bouygues Telecom. The competition authority recently issued a report in which it noted that MVNOs play a significant role in fostering more competition. Eric Besson, minister in charge of new technology and communications in the Sarkozy cabinet, says…

EarthLink says it wants to merge with other ISPs, possibly AOL, to keep its dial-up business alive. Although the company had a profit of $53 million in the second quarter of 2008, it had 30% fewer dial-up subscribers than last year with a significant drop (21%) in revenue. EarthLink pulled out of the municipal wireless business and its joint venture with SK Telecom, the MVNO called Helio. EarthLink lost a lot of money on Helio. They invested more than $200…

I’ve written a lot about Blyk, a mobile virtual network operator based in the UK, that has a novel business model: giving away free mobile phone service in exchange for users’ viewing MMS and SMS ads. While this “free service in exchange for ads” model has not worked well in the citywide Wi-Fi space and has never been tried in the cellular industry, Blyk claims they are doing very well. The reason: they target 16-24 year olds. Unless you fall…