Digital entrepreneurs who are entering the highly competitive MVNO market in Nigeria are learning that success in mobile communications demands speed, adaptability, and specialization. Call it a “start-up mentality”: get your ideas to your customers as quickly as possible, then refine your service as you go using real-world feedback. This edition of TechTalk Thursday will take you through PortaOne’s journey to MVNO success.

This is one of many strategies for new Mobile Virtual Network Operators recommended by Andriy Zhylenko, CEO of PortaOne, a company that’s been providing flexible business and operational platforms to telecoms across the globe for more than 20 years. Recently, PortaOne launched its MVNO Resource Hub , which offers ideas, case studies, webinars, and manuals to help emerging MVNOs find their niche and streamline their operations. Zhylenko’s advice is part of “The 7 Steps for MVNO Success,” a guide now available on the MVNO Resource Hub that’s designed to help emerging operators reduce their costs and adapt quickly to market demands. “The MVNO race in Nigeria, with over 40 new operators starting simultaneously, is a true testing ground for new technologies and approaches,” says Zhylenko. “We have a unique opportunity to see what is going to be effective, and what is not.” 

Here, Zhylenko discusses each of the seven steps he recommends for MVNOs who want to stay on the winning side in Nigeria, and what he sees as critical factors for success. 

Step 1: Stand out or stagnate 

“You can’t just sell what every other MVNO is selling but in a different color,” explains Zhylenko. “You have to find your customer and sell what they need.” That means investigating who is not being served well enough by the existing telecom services in your region. “Maybe it’s small business owners. Maybe it’s students, or farmers in rural areas,” he says. “If you can create a package of niche products that can satisfy your specific segment, no competitor will be able to match you.” 

And specialization has another benefit, too: it allows you to focus on acquiring only the technology components you really need, saving you upfront investment costs and accelerating your launch. 

Step 2: Offer solutions for growth 

“Basic connectivity such as wireless data or voice calls is not a product – it’s a bridge to what you really want to sell them,” says Zhylenko. Consumers can buy SIM cards and data anywhere, and likely for less. To compete, go beyond offering packages of data, SMS, or voice minutes, and help them reach their goals. 

“For individuals, that could be educational packages, retail partnerships, or enhanced social bundles. For businesses, you might offer communications with added features such as call recording and transcriptions, all bundled into a CRM to increase the efficiency of their sales team. Or, you could offer a mini call center service to improve their customer satisfaction, or mobile services combined with office telephony (cloud PBX) or MS Teams,” he explains. The bottom line: if you sell minutes, they’ll see a monthly expense. If you sell personal or professional growth, they’ll see value. 

Step 3: Bundle third-party services 

When it comes to basic voice and data, your ARPU (average revenue per customer) can be limited by your competitors’ pricing. “But,” says Zhylenko, “you can drastically increase your ARPU and profits if you partner with local or even global suppliers to bundle in value-added services.” People will pay more for access to those extra perks: streaming sports and entertainment, discounts at local retailers, or even special rates on transportation services. What local relationships could you build that would provide your customers with something they can’t find anywhere else?  

However, reliability here is key. “If your customer can’t log in and they miss the first half of that important football match, or if those retail points disappear, they’re not likely to renew,” Zhylenko warns. “You have to make sure you have seamless integration so you can offer a seamless customer experience.” 

Step 4: Leverage in-house and low-code automation 

We’re in the era of AI, APIs, and micro-services. With low- and no-code integrations, things that used to take months or years to develop can now be brought to market in days or even hours.

Andriy Zhylenko, CEO of PortaOne

Even better, these automated pipelines can be created and modified by your own in-house IT team: “People who know your business model and your customer needs, rather than some consultant on another continent who has no idea about your market.” Plus, automation frees your team from manual data entry. “The time you save on supporting your old solutions, doing manual data double-entry – and then fixing the problems created by such manual operations – can now be spent on developing something new,” adds Zhylenko. 

Step 5: Implement an agile framework 

“This is your most important competitive edge,” says Zhylenko. “An agile framework is what gives you the ability to deploy your ideas quickly, to test them, to see what will work in your market and what won’t.” 

Traditional businesses will put months or years into product development before a single real-world customer ever tries it. Now, Zhylenko explains, you can deploy a test service in a small piece of your market – say, a single town – and adjust it based on the customer response. Once your test customers are using it without complaint, then it’s time to deploy that service on a larger scale. “The key is to embrace API, and avoid ‘black box’ systems that won’t let you customize quickly,” notes Zhylenko. “Not only can they charge predatory fees for change requests, you could also find yourself waiting for months to see them. By the time you have the system you need, the market will have changed again.” 

Step 6: Enable customer empowerment through self-care 

“If your customers like your product, they’ll talk about it on social media. And if they don’t like your product, they’ll do the same thing,” Zhylenko says. So, rather than forcing your customers to wait on hold, give them the tools to manage their accounts on their own terms. And then make it easy for them to tell their friends all about it. 

“If you create a robust self-care portal and then connect that to tips and product information that you post on whatever social media channel your target market is using, you can upsell without using sales resources. Meanwhile, your customers will get the experience they want and expect… and they’ll tell their friends about it.”  

Step 7: Harvest IoT market growth 

Much of the telecom world still sees IoT as just another pathway for selling SIM cards. But Zhylenko sees a lot more promise in this fast-evolving market. 

“Google ‘affordable SIM cards’ and you’ll see pages and pages of sellers: not just local companies, but global players as well,” he explains. “You can’t compete with that and still make a profit.” But, he says, if you bring local IoT entrepreneurs into your ecosystem – providing cloud storage, data processing, IoT deployment hardware, and your own expertise – you’ll give them a better chance to survive past the start-up phase, along with a lot of reasons to stay. “From there,” he says, “their growth becomes your growth.”