Have OVIVO gone bust?

buglawton

Having jumped ship to Three, I'm loving the data speed compared to Vodafone, must be 10 times faster. Satnav now keeps up with where I am!
Voda has flexed it's muscles here methinks (see mobiletoday link above) but there's nothing like a bit of comeuppance when everyone moves to Three!

Doc_N

I wonder how Vodafone, those fine, upstanding, Corporation Tax paying citizens with the finest network out there, are viewing their contact with TalkTalk.

sniggings

whilst I wouldn't discount the conspiracy theories, I think the truth is the business model just wasn't providing the income needed.

If true and Ovivo had 50,000 customer that's hardly enough to worry the big boys, I doubt much ad revenue is generated from such a small number of customers, I for one mostly used wifi so hardly ever viewed the ads, the odd time I did the ad wouldn't even have finished loading before I had scrolled to the bottom of the page ready to press continue...I would think sticking a few youtube vids on would generate more income from the same 50,000 people.

jcc481

Good spot. So sad, it's like a silent protest and a play on words of the first ever sentence sent over the internet. Makes my heart feel very heavy.

Thank you! But..
Sorry for all those whose time I've wasted.
I was trying to imply the hello world, goodbye world link.
Maybe it's just because I've got time to waste.
And I've just wasted some of my time typing this out- invoice returned.

marks7389

buglawton wrote: »

Having jumped ship to Three, I'm loving the data speed compared to Vodafone, must be 10 times faster. Satnav now keeps up with where I am!
Voda has flexed it's muscles here methinks (see mobiletoday link above) but there's nothing like a bit of comeuppance when everyone moves to Three!

So annoying we don't have Three coverage at home otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

With their 321 pay as you go offer they are the only network that offers value for money to light but regular users (<100mins/texts/MB per month), not to mention their 4G policy and, for regular travellers, their Feel At Home package.

I wonder what all these initiatives are doing for their market share....

moneysavingkitten

sniggings wrote: »

whilst I wouldn't discount the conspiracy theories, I think the truth is the business model just wasn't providing the income needed.

If true and Ovivo had 50,000 customer that's hardly enough to worry the big boys, I doubt much ad revenue is generated from such a small number of customers, I for one mostly used wifi so hardly ever viewed the ads, the odd time I did the ad wouldn't even have finished loading before I had scrolled to the bottom of the page ready to press continue...I would think sticking a few youtube vids on would generate more income from the same 50,000 people.

Really? Vodafones Chief Exc Vittorio Colao is quoted as saying that they were being undermined:

Conditions at which you wholesale have to be built in a way that allows your own retail pricing to be effective. If you give away contracts that allow re-staking, betting and strange things that completely undermine your price, then quite frankly, for 50 million, 60 million, 70 million per year, even 100 million per year sometimes, it’s not worth it

Source: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news-list/news/industry/28803/vodafone_to_focus_on_larger_mvnos.aspx

Paul_Varjak

sniggings wrote: »

whilst I wouldn't discount the conspiracy theories, I think the truth is the business model just wasn't providing the income needed.

If true and Ovivo had 50,000 customer that's hardly enough to worry the big boys, I doubt much ad revenue is generated from such a small number of customers, I for one mostly used wifi so hardly ever viewed the ads, the odd time I did the ad wouldn't even have finished loading before I had scrolled to the bottom of the page ready to press continue...I would think sticking a few youtube vids on would generate more income from the same 50,000 people.

I think a lot of the 50,000 OVIVO customers were probably low users who could keep a SIM card going for free, without really ever having to view an ad!

In order to view the offers in Ovivo's emails it was necessary to sign into your account. I could not be bothered to do this, so I simply deleted all emails from Ovivo without viewing them.

It seems the contract with Cognatel would have allowed Ovivo customers to view those offers without signing in. If that had happened I, for one, would have been more amenable to viewing those offers.

I suspect that Cognatel wants to streamline itself before a takeover by Vodafone, so it is ditching small MVNOs (such as Ovivo). Maybe we will then see Vodafone's equivalent of O2's rather excellent in-house MVNO, GiffGaff?

sniggings

moneysavingkitten wrote: »

Really? Vodafones Chief Exc Vittorio Colao is quoted as saying that they were being undermined:



Source: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news-list/news/industry/28803/vodafone_to_focus_on_larger_mvnos.aspx

not sure how that quote explains the closing of Ovivo...it talks about 50 million etc but if it's true Ovivo only had 50,000 customers then they were hardly paying Vodafone anywhere near 50 million.

As I said Ovivo's business model is more likely to be to blame here than Vodafone are any other big player putting a stop to Ovivo.

Paul_Varjak

marks7389 wrote: »

So annoying we don't have Three coverage at home otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

With their 321 pay as you go offer they are the only network that offers value for money to light but regular users (<100mins/texts/MB per month), not to mention their 4G policy and, for regular travellers, their Feel At Home package.

I wonder what all these initiatives are doing for their market share....

I cannot get a signal on Three at home either on my smartphone. But, on my Chromebook at home, I can get better Internet on Three than any other provider, so I plumped for Samba Mobile (an MVNO on Three) which gives free internet for watching a few adverts.

If you have a tablet/PC/Chromebook that takes a SIM card then such an arrangement may work for you too. But you cannot make standard phone calls over Samba Mobile - you would have to opt for VOIP calls.

sniggings

Paul_Varjak wrote: »

I think a lot of the 50,000 OVIVO customers were probably low users who could keep a SIM card going for free, without really ever having to view an ad!

In order to view the offers in Ovivo's emails it was necessary to sign into your account. I could not be bothered to do this, so I simply deleted all emails from Ovivo without viewing them.

It seems the contract with Cognatel would have allowed Ovivo customers to view those offers without signing in. If that had happened I, for one, would have been more amenable to viewing those offers.

I suspect that Cognatel wants to streamline itself before a takeover by Vodafone, so it is ditching small MVNOs (such as Ovivo). Maybe we will then see Vodafone's equivalent of O2's rather excellent in-house MVNO, GiffGaff?

again that only re-enforces my point, I never clicked on one of Ovivo's emails, if a business model has to rely on the user clicking on an email to view ads then it's going to fail, even the forced ads on your phone you could bypass near enough without viewing.

Maybe they were not helped by the likes of Vodafone but imo the main reason was the model was just never going to work.

They on one hand wanted to attract low users but at the same time needed to sell extra addons to bring in extra income, the addons they offered were more expensive than the likes of GiffGaff anyway so why would I stay with Ovivo if I found myself needing to buy their expensive addons, I would just move, which leaves Ovivo with uses quite happy with what they were getting for free.

My opinin is based on Ovivo only having 50,000 customers, maybe if it turns out they had a few million then I would need to rethink things a little but as it stands I would bet it was just a case of the money running out and no offers for a buyout from the likes of Vodafone were forecoming, which must have been Ovivo's exit plan.