Austrian MVNO Spusu, which is owned by Mass Response, has confirmed that its long-awaited Italian unit will go live in the first quarter of 2020. As previously reported by MVNO Monday, in April this year Mass Response signed a wholesale contract with Italian provider Wind Tre and was later awarded one million numbers with the ‘3780’ prefix by the Ministry of Economic Development. Karl Katzbauer, CEO of Spusu Italia, has revealed that his company will use a proprietary technology developed in-house to help protect against cyber-attacks.
Austrian mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) Ventocom has revealed that its consolidated MVNO operations have reached the one million subscriber milestone, with Hofer Telekom (HoT) accounting for 900,000 of these accounts, of which the Slovenian unit accounted for roughly 80,000 customers. Other Ventocom brands include Liwest Mobil, Rapid Mobil and Allianz SIM.
Russian MVNO DANYCOM is poised to launch in four new markets in December 2019, namely: Estonia, Poland, Belgium and Italy. It has been suggested that all four units will have Full MVNO status, although the technical details have not been made clear. All of the new virtual operators will be branded DANYCOM Mobile, except the Italian one, which will trade as DANYCOMO Mobile.
Mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) Effortel has confirmed that it was selected by Russia’s VTB Bank to develop and manage its new mobile offering, VTB Mobile. The MVNO, which launched on 25 September, has enlisted Effortel to deploy a platform that is fully integrated with VTB’s digital banking infrastructure to support, and deliver, a unified customer service and sales process. The platform facilitates targeted marketing and cross-promotion of both VTB’s banking and mobile products and also supports a customer loyalty programme, which is linked to VTB’s ‘Multicard’ credit and debit card service.
BT Mobile – a brand operating as an MVNO over the BT Group-owned EE network – has launched 5G mobile packages bundled with fixed services for consumers and businesses in 20 large towns and cities, including high-demand areas of: Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh, Leicester, London and Manchester. 25 more cities/towns will be added to the service footprint by the end of 2019. The 5G service is available exclusively for BT Plus/BT Business Superfast or Ultrafast fixed broadband customers.
Finally, NVM Private Equity has announced that its fund, NVM Private Equity Vintage III, has completed the management buy-out of Leicestershire-based MVNO Mobius Networks, which provides data connectivity services for IoT and M2M applications across the healthcare, transport and retail sectors. The investment from NVM will help to accelerate Mobius’ growth. The MVNO was formed in 2004 and uses the Three UK network for connectivity. Its retail and industrial customers include Google, IBM, Dunelm, Aldi and Siemens.
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