November 21, 2005 
More news and reviews coming out about MVNOs and in particular the exodus going on at Amp’d. Om Malik has a great extended post that echoes many of my thoughts.
1) The space is crowded: with three announced, ESPN, Amp’d, and Helio all going after the same audience – and Voce trying to lock up the high end, there are a lot of companies competing for what is essentially carrier over flow. Om quotes Matthew Maier, from a Business 2.0 article from August, “When a carrier like Verizon Wireless or Sprint decides to lease its network to a third party to set up an MVNO, it’s doing so because it wants to reach markets it could not otherwise touch.”
2) Its expensive: Om quotes “Sky Dayton, the chief executive of Helio, which has substantially deep pockets told me that in the MVNO game, the table stakes are at least half a billion dollars.” I have also heard that number used before.
Its going to be a tough road.
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