Just how intelligent is Blyk?

Blykm, the UK’s incoming ad-funded MVNO, has received a good deal of coverage recently, its business model has not been tried before and the headline free calls offer has captured the media’s attention but just how does that model stand up?

“An excellent opportunity for operators to grow their revenue,” is the view of charging and business intelligence firm LogicaCMG Telecoms/Acision on the mobile advertising business model.

However, that also dependent on other factors, said Aram Krol, market development manager at Acision. In the case of the advertising-funded MVNO, Krol sees both pros and cons. For example, typically operators have heavyweight business support systems that handle charging and the provision of billing to subscribers, but as a free service for consumers, Blyk will not even need to send these bills.

“This gives Blyk administrative and cost advantages, as charging and billing are highly complex and expensive focuses for service providers,” said Krol.

However, as an MVNO Blyk will be getting no access to the breadth of real-time behavioural information that an operator can pull from its systems using powerful customer intelligence, Krol added, meaning it is relying on old fashioned CRM and historical activity-based marketing segmentation.

“Whether that is effective enough to deliver the full potential of mobile advertising remains to be seen,” Krol said.