In 2016, ABI Research forecasts that there will be 103 million 4G wholesale subscribers, served by mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that buy capacity and services  from a facilities-based provider and then retail services under their own brand names.

ABI Research estimates there were about 3.8 million 4G wholesale subscribers in 2010. 

Other forecasts suggest lower adoption. Separately, Ovum forecasts that global MVNO connections will reach 85.6 million by 2015, and revenues are expected to be $9.5 billion. In other words, ABI Research believes there will be more 4G MVNO customers than Ovum believes will exist in the entire MVNO market, including the much-larger 3G market. 

Over the next five years, new MVNO markets are expected to open up in South and Central America, Asia-Pacific, and in the Middle East. However, there are still regulatory and market challenges to overcome before these markets can offer an environment that can sustain MVNO activity. 

Therefore, Ovum expects the bulk of MVNO connections and revenue growth from 2010 to 2015 will come from established MVNO markets in Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America. 

“The 4G wholesale market will be one of the main catalysts in the mobile wireless market in the future,” says Philip Solis, ABI Research research director, mobile networks. “These forecasts are conservative, we believe, with mobile consumer electronics vendors’ adoption of this model being one factor that could greatly impact the potential of this market.” 

Historically, Europe has been the region most receptive to MVNOs, as an earlier forecast by Informa Telecoms & Media suggests. In fact, one possible reason for the upsurge in MVNOs between 2005 and 2007 was the rapid growth in the European markets.

While the 4G wholesale market currently revolves entirely around WiMAX because of Clearwire and UQ Communications, ABI Research believes that the market will shift rapidly to LTE in the next few years. 

While the market is forecasted to experience impressive growth globally, roughly one third of the anticipated 103 million 4G subscribers in 2016 will be from China and Japan. The United States and Russia will also be influential countries contributing to 4G wholesale market growth.

One reason it often is hard to predict MVNO subscribers is that roughly 25 percent of MVNOs will fail, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. In fact, there was a peak of MVNO launches in 2006, with declining numbers of new firms entering markets since 2006. 

Informa Telecoms & Media believes a new wave of company launches will happen in 2012 and 2013, though, driven in part by machine-to-machine applications and the sheer availability of 4G wholesale capacity, for the first time. In recent years, much of the new MVNO activity has been driven by retailers offering their own branded services as well as offerings aimed at particular ethnic or national groups. 

You might rightly infer from the range of forecasts that there are reasons to believe the growth pattern of recent years might change as 4G networks launch around the world. 

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