For another year, Madrid warmly hosts a new edition of Ingenium Mobile, the great event for MVNOs in Spain. The event, organised by JSC Ingenium, celebrates its 5th edition. Throughout these five years, more than 1,200 participants have attended and more than 65 guest speakers have collaborated with us, showcasing year after year current affairs in the Telco field, the main trends at any given time, and some of the most successful cases in the industry.
Bruno Delgado, a partner of Alantra Private Equity
Sergio Cano, Managing Director of Ingenium Group, opened the event by recalling Reinaldo Rodríguez, the first guest speaker at the 1st edition of Ingenium Mobile in 2015. Reinaldo, who had been chairman of the Spanish Telecommunication Market Commission (CMT), was one of the drivers for the MVNO market in Spain. According to Sergio Cano, “Reinaldo is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the main people responsible for the success of the MVNO market in our country and for that it enjoys such good results”.
Sergio summarised some of the main benchmarks reached by Ingenium Group within the last year, and highlighted private capital fund Alantra Private Equity’s acquisition in 2018 of a majority stake of the group. Then he gave the floor to Bruno Delgado, a partner from Alantra Private Equity, who stated the main reasons for committing to Ingenium Group: its own cutting-edge technology, its engagement in R&D, its customer base, and its ability to export its business model internationally.
The first speaker of the day was Jorge Pérez Martínez, Professor in the Polytechnic University of Madrid and former chairman of the Spanish National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society (ONTSI). The Professor focused his lecture on the impact of 5G and tried to shed light on the great uncertainty that surrounds this new technology. “It will be a long process until the 5G paradigm consolidates, but it will mark a before and an after for the Telco community, and it will open up a great new world of possibilities and new services”.
Jorge explained the major challenges regarding 5G: finding appropriate business models, developing the technology for terminals and devices, succeeding in deployment and migration models, and creating a favourable regulatory environment. Concerning this last point, he emphasised: “it is very important that the regulatory environment is flexible and allows agents at the initial phase to be able to build this new reality without being too strict”.
Jorge Pérez Martínez, Professor in the Polytechnic University of Madrid and former chairman of the ONTSI
Diego Otero, Subdirector of the Analysis of Electronic Communications in the CNMC Antonio Lorenzo, editor of the newspaper “El Economista”
Diego Otero, Subdirector of the Analysis of the Electronic Communications in the CNMC, presented his lecture “The analysis of broadband market and wholesale services based on NEBA fibre (New Broadband Ethernet Service)”. Diego started his speech by pointing out that Spain is the third country in the European Union in FTTH/FTTB penetration, and the leading country in pure FTTH technology.
In Spain there has been an exponential increase of fibre coverage in rural areas; nevertheless, we still face an important digital divide. “While the average coverage in Spain is 77%, rural areas barely reach 33%. Nevertheless, it is also true, and it deserves to be highlighted, that some Spanish villages have much better fibre coverage than some London neighbourhoods”. Diego closed his intervention by asserting that “thanks to the regulatory measures undertaken both by the CMT and by the CNMC, we are facing an intense migration towards new generation networks”, which partially explains why Spain leads the pack internationally in the deployment of fibre.
The second half of the event began with the Sergio Cano’s speech, which began with him looking back to his presentation at the Ingenium Mobile edition of 2017 in which he wondered whether MVNOs could continue after the Mercado 15 deregulation. Sergio celebrated the fact that his forecasts had been successfully met, and that the MVNO market in Spain was enjoying good results indeed. He dared to do the same thing again by opting for two variables which he thinks will be decisive for the industry in the years to come: sectoral MVNOs and 5G.
Sectoral MVNOs represent a clear opportunity for the future. This opportunity involves offering a value solution with a high level of specialisation for groups and/or niches with very complex issues and which cannot be reached by big MVNOs. The differentiation is not only about service and price; super specialisation is key to being competitive now, and even to become itself a new category of MVNO. The other variable (5G) has again been placed on the table due to Host Operators’ ability to sell a part of their network infrastructure to companies that would like to operate their own services. This opens a doorway to new opportunities and, in particular, to those MVNOs that will have access to this new technology and develop much more innovative value proposals.
Sergio Cano, the Managing Director of JSC Ingenium
Meinrad Spenger, Managing Director of MásMóvil Group
Meinrad Spenger, Managing Director of MásMóvil Group, started his presentation by announcing officially for the first time to all participants at Ingenium Mobile, that MásMóvil would join the Ibex 35. In 2017, just two years ago, this was the first listed company that came from the Spanish Alternative Stock Market (MAB) to the Spanish Continuous Market. Two years later, MásMóvil is triumphantly joining the group of the 35 most important companies in Spain that constitute the main reference stock index of the Spanish stock exchange. Congratulations on the excellent work you have done.
Meini presented the group’s main turnover figures and its evolution, and emphasised the key areas on which this growth had been based, which he summarised as: ”making our customers the most satisfied in the market”.
The event finished with an interview with Javier Sendín, Networks Group director of the GSMA. The person responsible for carrying out the interview was José Antonio Tercero, Founder and General Manager of Movilonia. Javier provided an initial general introduction to the GSMA and gave an overview on the main aims of the Association and the different operative working groups at an international level – IoT, Fraud and Security, Billing, Interoperability, VoLTE, 5G eSIM…. Javier particularly underscored Future Network, a working group specialised in the development of tools for monetising the future business opportunity offered by 5G, ensuring savings and detecting new business models.
When asked about the future of the Mobile World Congress, Javier answered that the future of this international fair will continue to be deeply linked to the city of Barcelona, provided that certain minimum levels of social and political harmony are guaranteed. “Even though it is not possible to guarantee this one hundred percent”, he remarked, “Barcelona remains the favourite place of the GSMA for its hotel capacity, its weather and its location”.
Javier Sendín, Networks Group director of the GSMA. José Antonio Tercero, Founder and General Manager of Movilonia
As for the future of eSIM, another hot topic on which the GSMA is currently working, Javier clarified that “although there is no official schedule for the deployment of the first devices with eSIM yet, it makes sense to consider the end of the year”.
Javier’s contribution finished with the standing of MVNOs. The global turnover of MVNOs is USD 80 billion euros, which has inevitably raised the interest within the Association in MVNOs. Javier explained the opening of RAEX service as a milestone – Roaming Agreement Exchange – which until just some months ago was for the exclusive access of network Operators. The Association has decided that the standing of MVNOs is sufficiently weighty to have direct access without having to rely on the relevant Host operator, to all the information on roaming crossing among the different international operators.