Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) are a well-established part of today’s mobile communication market with further unused potential. This ranges from youth brands (the "MTVnet"), through consumer segments (the "CoffeeNet"), and onto high value service offers tailored specifically for business travellers.

Many of the existing MVNOs limit themselves to plain mobile service offers. The reasons for this might be manifold, but the non-converged structures dominant in today’s telecom networks certainly contribute. Creating interesting business models that span across several different fixed and mobile solution providers while guaranteeing a consistent service offering is not an easy task.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to offer a package of mobile voice, fixed voice, roaming, data and WLAN minutes that could be flexibly charged based on each customer’s particular needs and which could vary from month to month? And what about including multi-media services such as video conferencing or messaging (beyond SMS) in this service offer? And why not Push-To-Talk (PTT) or advanced location and presence based services?

In the Next Generation Mobile Networks based on 3GPPs IMS have substantial potential to play an important role in implementing this vision. IMS based networks have several built-in characteristics that can help overcome the limitations faced today:

The first to mention is the built-in Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC). The relevant standardization bodies (3GPP and OMA on the mobile side, ETSI/TISPAN on the fixed side) are busy ensuring that the IMS applications are aligned, thus offering further opportunities for FMC. This will help virtual operators to agree on simpler business models than just a single access-independent core network infrastructure. A common service layer also needs to be taken into account here.