Author: Jon

The December Holidays are almost upon us with Hannukah starting on the 18th, Kwanza on the 26th, and of course, we are just two weeks away from Christmas.  In my last article, I asked industry executives what they were thankful for as we entered the Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone was upbeat about their company, the workplace, serving customers, and being blessed to work in the wireless communications industry. Black Friday came with the usual blockbuster sales offers and low prices for phones and services with … Continue reading “‘Tis The Season For Giving & Supporting Each Other After Massive Layoffs”

Thanksgiving is less than a week away and in just seven days it will be Black Friday.  How important has Black Friday become for retail?  In 2019 (right before the Covid pandemic), Black Friday beat CYBER MONDAY as the busiest digital shopping day.  Over 93 million people shopped online on Black Friday, beating Cyber Monday by over 10 million customers! Tell Me More About Black Friday! From our friends at Good Housekeeping, Black Friday, a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving, is the most popular time … Continue reading “A Week Until Black Friday, We Should All Be Thankful For The Industry We Work In!”

I had a great week of listening and learning the past week.  First, I had the opportunity to meet in New York City with Dennis Bauer, the co-founder of San Francisco based GIGs.  GIGs is a “global operator in your pocket, without the hassle,” and is an embeddable, API-first operator that lets companies sell voice and data plans to their customers without having to set up an MVNO in every market.  (More on GIGs in my next article). I also had the great experience of … Continue reading “MVNOs Need to Look at New Products & Platforms to Keep Up With the Big Guys”

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. The result is the representation of an object, sound, image, document or signal obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discreet set of points or samples (Wikipedia). My friends at MVNO Nation (www.MVNOnation.com) over in the United Kingdom recently sent me two very timely and valuable Whitepapers that could be helpful if you’re looking into digitalisation of an MVNO (they spell it a little different over … Continue reading “MVNO Nation On The Digitalization of MVNOs!”

I looked at the calendar today and was astonished to see that tomorrow is October 1st and the beginning of the fourth quarter.  It seems like only a few weeks ago that we were planning for January’s Consumer Electronics Show, prepaid sales for Tax Time, and adjusting our plans based on 2021 Holiday sales. Now the most important time of the year is upon us where help wanted signs dot almost every retailer, baseball playoffs are a week or two away … Continue reading “It’s The 4th Quarter….. Are MVNOs Ready?”

By Jon Horovitz – Aug 19, 2022 Consumer Cellular has been one of the greatest success stories in the MVNO space. Founded in 1995 in Portland, Oregon, Consumer Cellular helped to pioneer providing cellular service to the 50-plus-year-old demographic and now boasts over 4 million customers! The company is known for providing a superb customer experience. They have been ranked by J.D. Power as #1 in Customer Service among Wireless Value MVNOs, 13 Times in a Row! Consumer Cellular has … Continue reading “An Interview With Consumer Cellular’s CMO, Craig Lister”

The lazy, hazy and in most spots, non-rainy days of summer have not cooled off wireless sales.  With today being August 5th, is it really only 31 days until Labor Day?  If you’ve been vacationing, here’s what’s going on: Charter Communications (Spectrum Mobile) and Comcast (Xfinity) had tremendous Q2, 2022 wireless sales adding a combined 661,000 net wireless additions for the three months ending June, 30th. That gives them 9 million combined wireless subscribers, up from 8.5 million at the previous … Continue reading “Big Cable Hits 9 Million Wireless Subs, What’s The Key To Their Success & Can Your MVNO Compete?”

If you’re reading this on your mobile phone, please stop and ask yourself, “why did I buy this particular model?”  Is it an Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Google, TCL, OnePlus, or a lesser-known brand that most of the non-exclusive dealers sell?  Is it new?  Refurbished?  Did you get device protection, or insurance, when you acquired it?  Did it come “kitted” with a charging cord and cube or just the handset?  What about white-labeled products and influencers attaching their name to a … Continue reading “It’s All About the Phones, Or Is It? What Are the Reasons For Purchasing A Specific Model?”

For most of us in the wireless business, it is common knowledge that “the first handheld cellular phone call was made on April 3, 1973, by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper from Sixth Avenue in New York while walking between 53rd and 54th streets. Cooper hoisted the 2 1/2-pound prototype to his ear and called a rival, Joel Engel of Bell Laboratories at AT&T, to declare that his Motorola team had devised a functional portable phone.” What is surprising to many … Continue reading “While MVNOs Were Sleeping, Cable Companies Added 8.5m Wireless Subs”

What value can you assign to “Free?”  This debate has been going on for years and has now found its way into the wireless connectivity world.  The old adage that “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is” has steered most intelligent people away from getting something from nothing.  Even if you are the recipient of a potential windfall of millions of dollars from an African Prince, you still must provide your personal information and a $500-$750 … Continue reading “The Value Of Free, Is It Really Free Phones, And Free Service?”