Here’s a pertinent question: Why do media companies want to be wireless service providers? Jupiter Research analyst Julie Ask wondered that after the news of yet another high-profile MVNO burnout, with Disney (NYSE: DIS). In RCR News she writes her conclusion, that “the media companies want a richer platform and set of options for interacting with cellphone users, and they are dissatisfied with their options today”. Her argument is that they are going to remain dissatisfied for the next few years because carriers are focusing on providing communication services because that’s where they get their revenues and what keeps customers, which is fair enough. At some point good communication services will become a given, and at that stage “consumers will look to criteria such as handset selection and entertainment options, which are secondary or tertiary in their decision-making process today”.

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The big brands are beginning to realise this: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) started the trend by pretty much owning the customer but still using the operators for networks, and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) seems to be following suit by planning an OS with services rather than a handset or MVNO. ESPN and Disney are licking their wounds by making the special features of their MVNOs available as applications, which is really what they should have done in the first place. That all being said, Disney and ESPN are the same company and Amp’d was a start-up, so it’s perhaps unfair to generalize that media companies want to be operators…

Txtbl CEO Amol Sarva, who was also a co-founder at MVNO Virgin Mobile, has given some advice on how to make a successful MVNO, in Silicon Alley Insider. One very pertinent figure is that the industry average MVNOs pay for voice calls is $0.07 per minute—so “when Amp’d was selling 1000 minutes for $40…they were making $0.04.” And I assume hoping their customers would use less than half of the minutes they were alloted. On the other hand, “if Virgin’s frumpy prepaid customers spend $20/month to use 150 minutes… they are spending $0.13 per minute.” Revenue is good, profit is essential.