With exclusion of Tele2 as MVNO, the ranking of the biggest VOs has changed somewhat. KPN’s brand Telfort (excluding its business customers) remains market leader based on the number of mobile Sims at the end of Q1 2016. The next four places are taken by Lebara, Lycamobile, hollandsnieuwe and Simyo. With the exclusion of Tele2, Simyo joined the top-five list. The top five brands together accounted for 62.8 percent of the total virtual mobile Sims, an increase from 55.5 percent at the end of September 2015. The next five brands were relatively stable, with Ben leading, followed by Simpel, Telfort Zakelijk, AH Mobiel and Ziggo.
Of the total VO customers, around 3.2 million were customers with mobile operator-owned virtual brands, whose share remained relatively stable. The independent MVNOs grew organically by 1.0 percent to 3.4 million SIMs, which is about 17 percent of the total Dutch mobile market in Q1 2016.New entrants and exits
The VO market remains quite crowded. Brands exit the market, while also several, and in particular small business providers, launch more new initiatives, including mobile services as an add-on to their existing services. Mobile Vikings stopped services in the Netherlands, and Mtel ended MVNO VastMobiel, both at the end of 2015. Relieve Mobile also ceased its MVNO in March 2016 and due to a merger with Dean Connect, the brand One XS ceased to exit. Since the end of Q1 2016, another three brands exited or announced plans to leave the market: Clubmobiel, Delta Mobiel and Yes telecom acquired Dekatel, without continuing the Dekatel brand. Besides new entrants and exits, other changes up to Q1 2016 include Fiber Nederland acquiring Stipte and Choozze stopping its freemium offer.
Telecompaper expects more new entrants in the VO market particularly in the business space, but also several exits, particularly in the consumer space amongst the independent MVNOs which only offer basic mobile services and depend on mobile as their main source of income.
