November 25, 2005
Content MVNOs
I think the content MVNOs don't really make a ton of sense unless they can drive a major functional theme of the mobile phone. Voice is one, photos are another, music is another, and maybe games or things like that will emerge over time.
But a sports MVNO? (Or a kids content MVNO?) I have my doubts. Here is why.
This phone costs $500 (though you can send in a $100 rebate to get it down to $400, though rebates suck, assume only 60% of the value is saved). That is a lot. The Treo 650 is $350 at Sprint.com with no rebates to mail; and at Amazon.com you can probably beat that by $100-200 withe the whole mail-in rigamarole. The Treo plays movies, can be expanded by SD card up to 2GB, plays music including Windows Media, does email, does web, does attachments, has a touchscreen, and thousands of shareware/freeware apps to play with etc etc. And it's just one of your handset choices. Want to get a free Nokia? Do that instead. Or choose the "Power Vision" Samsung which is $230.
The ESPN phone has lots of this too - miniSD, music, a nice camera. But not all of it.
This phone is $500 and you can't choose anything else.
The airtime for Sprint is 400 minutes for $34.99. A sticker price of around 8.7c per minute assuming you optimize the hell out of your usage. By contrast, the ESPN phone is $65 for 400 minutes - 14.4c per minute. That's 65% more per minute.
Not quite a square comparison though (yet)
| Sprint | ESPN |
| Any phone | The one phone |
| $0-$350 | $500 |
| Available high end phone | High end phone |
| 8.7c/min | 14.4c/min |
| Free N&W | Free N&W |
Sprint's sports "channel" | ESPN's
|
| $15 extra for "Vision" (3.8c/min) | Data apps included |
| Unlimited data usage | Limited to 30mb |
| ESPN.com content, and SI.com, Nascar, CNN, etc | ESPN content |
| Unclear whether this stuff is Power Vision or Vision |  Neat web like Yahoo Sports |
| No custom handset features | Neat "scores instead of wallpaper"-type stuff |
