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MVNOs vs Service Providers |
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The article really should talk about the success and failures in the MVNO market. [[User:Mathiastck|Mathiastck]] 17:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
== MVNOs vs Service Providers ==
Back in the early nineties, British Mobile phone service was rarely sold by the operators themselves, instead being sold by so-called "Service Providers", who would, like MVNOs, buy bulk airtime and sell it under their own brandnames. Many early GSM phones were SP locked, so, for example, a phone sold by Carphone Warehouse on a CW tariff that works on Vodafone's network wouldn't work with a SIM sold by (erm, I forget the other SPs) XYZ Telecom that also happened to use Vodafone.
These are clearly the forerunner to MVNOs, and indeed many operators that are apparently MVNOs are actually operating exactly as companies like Carphone Warehouse did in the 1990s. Is it completely fair to describe Virgin as being the first? How does a modern MVNO differ from these early virtual networks?
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