Monetizing Intelligence

From Connectivity to Monetization: The Next Layer of Intelligence

During the last few months, we have discussed several aspects related to data, AI and its impact in the MVNO industry. In “Intelligent Innovation: How AI is Transforming the MVNO Landscape”, MVNO Index, June 2025, we emphasized how AI can be applied in many use cases, but stressed that success strongly depends on organizational alignment and data maturity. Similarly, our article “How MVNEs & MVNAs Can Lead the Data Revolution”, MVNO Index, July 2025, discussed the centrality of data strategy, integration, and governance as prerequisites for meaningful analytics and AI-driven insights. Then, in “Unlocking True Power of AI”, MVNO Index, August 2025, we explored how AI initiatives often fail because of a lack of change management, cultural readiness, and cross-functional collaboration. And finally on our last article “AI Readiness Maturity Score”, we discussed about the AI Readiness scoring, that suggests a methodology to understand the actual situation of data and AI, that can be used to determine the path of what is actually required to have successful AI implementations.

But the reality is that all of this is only the foundation to identifying the value of intelligence. The real question now is: so what? How do companies go beyond building data pipelines and AI capabilities to actually monetize intelligence, transforming it into new products, services, and revenue streams?

Connectivity will always be the foundation, but it is no longer the differentiator. The winners of the next decade will be those who know how to package intelligence, deliver it as a service, and orchestrate ecosystems around it, bringing not only the connectivity, but also the added value from personalized services.

The Shift: From Efficiency Gains to New Revenues

So far, most of the industry’s conversation and use cases about AI and data has been focused on the inside. MVNOs have used intelligence to reduce churn, cut fraud, and automate operational tasks. These are valuable improvements, but they are mainly cost-avoidance strategies. The opportunity lies in turning intelligence outside of the operation by not just using it to run a leaner MVNO, but to create entirely new products that customers, partners, and enterprises are willing to pay for.

The change from dashboards in the back office to market-facing services marks the moment when intelligence stops being an operational tool and becomes an asset. With margins tightening and data volumes expanding, MVNOs can no longer rely solely on efficiency to remain competitive. The next frontier is transforming their data advantage into differentiated value propositions that drive growth.

Three Pathways to Monetizing Intelligence

1. Insight-as-a-Service

With the correct usage of the existing data, every MVNO has access to unique views of how customers behave such as which devices are popular in each region, how usage peaks vary throughout the day, or how churn rates differ across demographics. When these patterns are aggregated and anonymized, they become valuable not just internally, but to outside stakeholders.

A company might use mobility heatmaps generated from anonymized data to plan their investments. Enterprises could subscribe to dashboards that show regional usage trends before launching new services. Even host operators, often holding the upper hand in wholesale negotiations, could find themselves dealing with MVNOs that bring hard data on performance and customer experience to the table.

The real objective is to change what once sat hidden in spreadsheets to become a subscription-based intelligence product that provides recurring revenue while strengthening the MVNO’s credibility and influence in the value chain.

2. Automation-as-a-Service

For many smaller MVNOs, building AI agents that can use the data that is made available to them is unrealistic. They don’t have the teams, budgets, or infrastructure. This creates an opportunity for MVNEs and MVNAs to package their own automation tools and offer them as ready-made services.

Consider a fraud-detection engine that flags suspicious SIM activations in real time, or a churn prediction module that automatically triggers retention offers depending on the churn score. An MVNE could deploy these tools across its tenants, turning what began as an internal capability into a shared service.

The economics are powerful: the enabler invests once, but every additional MVNO that plugs in adds recurring revenue. For smaller operators, it’s a gateway to advanced intelligence without heavy overhead. For the enabler, it’s a high-margin, data-driven business line that strengthens long-term partnerships.

3. Vertical Marketplaces

The MVNO market is increasingly fragmenting into specialized niches: healthcare, logistics, gaming, travel, smart homes, even pets. In each vertical, intelligence is what transforms connectivity into a complete solution.

A healthcare-focused MVNO, for example, could integrate wearable device data with predictive analytics, offering hospitals a monitoring service that goes beyond connectivity. A fleet MVNO might combine IoT SIMs with route optimization and predictive maintenance, creating a package that logistics companies can’t ignore. Lifestyle or your-oriented MVNOs could curate marketplaces of digital services that can vary from education apps to entertainment bundles  using contextual intelligence to deliver the right offer at the right moment.

In these cases, the SIM card is no longer the product. It’s just the entry point into a much broader, intelligence-powered ecosystem.

Turning Intelligence into a Product

he common thread across these pathways is the ability to treat intelligence as something that can be packaged, positioned, and sold. That means going beyond dashboards or ad-hoc reports to create offerings with clear value propositions, pricing models, and go-to-market plans.

Some MVNOs are already moving in this direction. One European operator, for instance, initially developed real-time data pipelines to reduce churn. Once the system was operational, they discovered that enterprise clients were willing to pay for access to regional usage insights. By productizing these anonymized dashboards as a premium add-on, the MVNO opened a new revenue stream that soon outpaced their roaming bundles. What began as an internal efficiency initiative became their most profitable business line.

To succeed at this transformation, MVNOs must think like product companies: designing offers, defining service tiers, and building commercial teams capable of selling intelligence, not just connectivity. It requires collaboration across marketing, technology, and operations, which is precisely the cross-functional mindset explored in our previous article on AI readiness.

From Operator to Orchestrator

The strategic impact of monetizing intelligence goes beyond new revenue streams. MVNOs that make this leap evolve from resellers of connectivity into orchestrators of ecosystems. They gain leverage in negotiations with host operators and deeper relationships with enterprises and end users.

This evolution mirrors what hyperscalers achieved in cloud computing, which was moving from infrastructure providers to orchestrators of entire digital ecosystems. For MVNOs, intelligence plays the same catalytic role. It connects data, partners, and experiences into a cohesive value network.

Connectivity remains essential, but it becomes just one element in a broader offering. By monetizing intelligence, MVNOs can position themselves at the center of innovation, enabling new services, industries, and collaborations that extend far beyond the SIM.

The Winners Will Monetize

As previously mentioned, the MVNO industry is at an inflection point. Data and AI are no longer optional, but they are not the endgame either. The real opportunity lies in transforming intelligence into value. Not as a prediction of the future, but as a reflection of where the market is heading.

The shift from efficiency to monetization will not happen overnight, nor will it follow a single formula. Each MVNO will find its own path depending on its data maturity, partnerships, and customer base. But one pattern is already clear: those who learn to translate intelligence into tangible, market-ready products will define the next generation of growth in the MVNO space.