Success Story | Disrupting Mobile Markets

Disrupting Mobile Markets

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isrupting Mobile

Markets

Views from Republic Wireless and Ting Mobile on Winning

A lack of competition in any industry often leads to lazy incumbents, which usually equals bad customer service and unfair pricing models. Those situations are the ripest for disruption, which led to the creation of two MVNOs, Ting and Republic Wireless.

Unlike many larger mobile companies, Ting, a Toronto-based MVNO that uses Sprint’s CDMA and LTE networks, doesn’t subsidize phone sales or require long-term contracts. Pricing is never bundled, so the company’s 70,000 customers only pay for what they use. There are separate tiers for voice minutes, text messages and data, and each is adjusted month-to-month to match actual usage.

Noticing mobile’s lack of competition and customer frustration with bad service and unfair prices, Tucows, an Internet services and telecommunications company, launched Ting in 2012, banking on the idea that customers were ready for innovation, said Scott Allan, Director of Ting. Ting wasn’t the only company looking to disrupt the industry.

Republic Wireless, a wireless communications service provider that uses Sprint’s CDMA network, launched in 2010, and is known for its $25-per-month unlimited calling, texting and data service plans. When it came to disrupting the market, being the underdog worked to the company’s advantage, said Lon France, Republic’s SVP of Business Development.

“I think in any company that you work for in the thousands of employees, change and true disruption are a little harder to achieve,” said France who often uses a quote from “Moneyball” to explain disruption. “’If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we’ll lose to the Yankees out there.’ It’s exactly the same for MVNOs.”

Disruption requires innovation. Only two disruption models have been proven in the MVNO market, according to France. 1. Price disruption at a mass-market scale 2. Uncovering a niche market andserving it better than anyone else.

“Just price is almost a fool’s errand when you are going up against someone whose got owners economics,” he said. “So even if you are a mass market play, knowing that customer well has been a key to success,” he said.

Allan agreed, saying that mobile was screaming for disruptors, and he’s happy that his company wasn’t the only one to recognize it. He views the market as vast enough for many small MVNOs to come in and take away market share from the big guys. Although it’s true that at the end of the day everyone is competing against one another, it’s almost like the smaller, disruptive companies are going up against the largest two companies in the industry.



“If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we’ll lose to the Yankees out there.” – Moneyball

“When you look at some other MVNOs that have done innovation around the same time, there was sort of Renaissance,” said Allan, who credits Sprint with being a major part of the change. “If you look at MVNOs in North America, the more innovative MVNOs are on the Sprint network, and that’s because Sprint, as a company, embraces that and supports it.”

Although Tucows, Ting’s parent company, was always looking for new markets to enter, wireless previously had seemed too much of a challenge.

“We look at hundreds of different (markets) and enter very few,” Allan said. “But at some point wireless went from looking at being way too difficult and not having what we’d need to be able to innovate to seeming like it was worth exploring.”

The lack of competition was too intriguing to pass up, said Allan, who pointed out that the “The big two” had an unhealthy amount of market share, which is often a sign that an industry is ready for disruption.

For more information on creating a successful MVNO, contact your Sprint Wholesale sales consultant or check out wholesale.sprint.com.


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“If you look at MVNOs in North America, the more innovative MVNOs are on the Sprint network”


Scott Allan Director of Ting

Lon France Republic WIreless Senior Vice President of Business Development and Strategy