Turns Out People Don't Want To Buy Mobile Service From A TV Station

Wireless

from the the-end-of-branded-MVNO-hype? dept

A few years back, before Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and Sprint bought Nextel, there was all this talk about how there was too many players in the mobile operator space, and how consolidation had to occur (as it did). However, based on that, it seemed odd that many of the same people then talked up how wonderful mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) would be. Any company, the feeling was, could just slap their brand on someone else’s network and suddenly be a mobile operator themselves. Of course, the missing part of the equation was why anyone would want to buy such a branded mobile phone and service, as opposed to from a traditional mobile operator. Unfortunately, some seemed to feel that the brand association alone would be enough. Disney’s ESPN was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon, though from the beginning some were asking why people would buy phone service from ESPN. Obviously, there are sports fanatics who like the idea of getting sports content on a phone, but why wouldn’t ESPN just partner with existing operators or just put their content online in a mobile format? Betting that people want your content so badly they’ll completely ditch their existing mobile operator and phone for you, is a pretty big bet. Of course, it didn’t help that, on top of that, ESPN decided to charge ridiculously high prices.

The company also seemed to forget the key thing: as nice as it may be to get sports content on your mobile phone, the key reason people buy mobile phone service is to communicate, not to get sports info. Getting broadcast style content may be a nice-to-have, and it may be high up on some people’s lists of cool features, but mobile phones are about communication first. And, when you think of communications, ESPN isn’t a brand name that comes to mind. So, despite a ridiculous amount of advertising, it turned out that very, very, very few people ever felt it was worth their while to sign up for mobile phone service from ESPN. As was rumored late last night, this morning the company has announced plans to shut down the offering by the end of the year. At least they’ll be refunding the purchase price of the phones to the few thousand people who signed up. There is still some potential for MVNOs that look for ways to offer services that mobile operators are avoiding, but hopefully this wakes up those who figured that every big name brand would have their own mobile phone service to the simple fact that selling telecom services requires more than a big consumer brand.