EasyMobile dead; Everyone + Dog exiting MVNO market

Link:
Easymobile hangs up, stranded by supplier | The Register

Ok sweeping headline (the ‘everyone + dog’ bit), but here’s what prompted it:

Easymobile – the mobile wing of Stelios Haji Ioannou’s easyGroup – is closing. Customers have until midnight on 13 December to move their phone service.

A message on the website says:”easyMobile.com in the UK was set up as a partnership between TDC (the telecom company from Denmark) and easyGroup (Stelios’ investment vehicle). Due to a change of strategy at TDC, TDC have decided to withdraw from the UK market.”

Alex caught this one in The Register.

Deary me. Close? Not even some sort of fire-sale to keep the repuation alive? That’s telling for the industry. It effectively says that EasyMobile’s customers were worth nothing. Well, in fact, their customers were a distraction — a cost. If they were of any value, someone would have swooped in and bought’em up, one imagines.

I’d much rather have ‘sold’ my EasyMobile business to someone for an ‘undisclosed sum’ of a few quid than tell everyone I didn’t quite mean it when I launched the company, close the business and suggest that anyone who wants to can port their number to Fresh.

This doesn’t say much for TDC at all. What a ridiculous business practice and a whole waste of cash.

Deary me. Running an MVNO in the UK without a good few million subscribers a la Tesco Mobile? You might as well do the same.

Alex commented in his mail:

So if someone of Stelios’s calibre is pulling out of the MVNO market,
how do ‘Blyk‘ think they’re going to do better?

Who knows, eh? Sit back, order a pizza and behold.