The biggest change in the U.S. mobile virtual network operator market since about 2018 has been market entry by U.S. cable operators. The biggest change in late 2020 was the entry of Dish Network. The biggest change in the U.S. MVNO market in September 2020 is the sale of Tracfone, formerly the biggest U.S. MVNO, to Verizon.
Tracfone has in past years had as much as 65 percent market share, but by early 2020 had dipped putting it behind the facilities mobile operator value brands. Where Tracfone had perhaps 10 million accounts in early 2020, AT&T had at least 17 million accounts. Verizon had at least six million accounts under its own retail brand.
T-Mobile’s owned Metro brand had about 19 million accounts. Straight Talk, the Walmart brand supported by America Movil, had about nine million subscribers. America Movil still operates various brands representing about 15 million accounts.
Dish acquired about 11 million former MVNO accounts owned by T-Mobile and Sprint.
At some point, Dish will transition to facilities-based competition, while the cable companies will rely increasingly on offload of wholesale traffic to owned facilities. The net result is that more of the MVNO market share will shift to the facilities-based providers.
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