1
The rise of digital brands 3. New distribution models Moving on from brick and mortar shops towards e-commerce in the retail space has also had an impact on how operators interact with their customers. New ways of selling and customer service have emerged, from online-only, self-care and community distribution to rewards-based partnerships and digital brands as add-ons to other customer-facing industries.
Online only brands
Community-based distribution
Bundling with media and utilities
4. Regulatory openness towards MVNOs In the last few years, more countries have made strides to open their telecoms markets to MVNOs and encouraged the launch of sub-brands in order to promote competition and new services. In terms of favourable regulatory environments, Europe stands out with the most mature market, but other regions are catching up. For example, in MENA, Saudi Arabia approved two newcomers in 2021 and in LatAm, Colombia and Brazil have made strides to encourage more competition by simplifying the licensing process.
5. 5G leading to new opportunities in IoT and content services While not traditionally included under the colloquial definition of MVNOs, IoT providers most certainly rely on operators’ networks for connectivity. The 5G deployment will lead to new IoT applications thanks to increased capacity, lower latency, falling device cost and with new enablement technologies. As a result, IoT platforms are moving forward and deepening their relationships with operators, establishing digital brands that can serve the specific needs of millions of connected devices in the IoT space, including security and data analytics. Beyond the industrial applications, consumers will benefit from 5G’s increased capacity for fixed wireless connectivity, as an alternative to fixed broadband, and data-heavy applications, such as video streaming and online gaming. © 2022 confidential
6
