Tesco plans November launch for MVNO service

Retail giant Tesco will launch a mobile phone service in Ireland next month with the backing of a major pre-Christmas sales campaign, reports the Republic’s Sunday Business Post. The supermarket chain has been allocated the ‘089’ prefix in Ireland and the new mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) business – a first for Ireland – will be run by Tesco executive Tom Britten. It is understood Tesco has inked a mobile reseller deal with O2 Ireland to buy blocks of capacity on its network and then resell them under its own brand name. The company is in the final throes of pre-testing the network with the country’s other operators – a fact confirmed by Vodafone which is involved in the process. ‘Things are on track for a pre-Christmas launch,’ a spokesman said. ‘Initially, we’ll sell pre-paid services into the market.’