Vodafone UK Signs New MNO Deal with Dixons Carphone UPDATE
Mobile operator Vodafone UK has today announced that they’ve signed a new multi-year Mobile Network Operator (MNO) partnership deal with Dixons Carphone, which separately runs the MVNO provider iD Mobile and will thus see new packages launch “later in the year.”
For those still living under a rock, Dixons Carphone is the business behind Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse – they also own iD Mobile. But as a result of today’s agreement Vodafone will now become the “exclusive mobile network partner (MNO) for Dixons Carphone“, although so far as we’re aware Three UK will continue to underpin iD Mobile.
Unfortunately, today’s announcement doesn’t spell out what kind of changes we can expect from the agreement, except for the fact that Dixons Carphone will “benefit from continued great deals from Vodafone” and “Vodafone will underpin Dixon Carphone’s new mobile offer, launching later in the year, alongside the business’s award-winning mobile virtual network (MVNO), iD Mobile.”
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Max Taylor, Consumer Director of Vodafone, said:
“This is a very exciting new agreement for us, that ensures connectivity to our award-winning network is made available to even more people across the UK. This is a completely new and exclusive arrangement, which will drive customer experience improvements and value growth for both parties. The partnership gives us the opportunity to work more closely together than ever before, focusing on creating more innovative mobile solutions for customers.”
Ed Connolly, Chief Commercial Officer of Dixons Carphone, said:
“We’re delighted to develop our long-term partnership with Vodafone which will see them become our exclusive MNO partner ahead of our new mobile offer launching later this year.
Together, we’ll provide an exciting and innovative new mobile offering designed with modern customers’ needs in mind. The new offer will give customers better flexibility, transparency and value and is the final step in the transformation of our mobile business.”
The press release isn’t particularly clear on what this could mean for iD Mobile in the future, which only recently signed an extended agreement with MVNO supplier Three UK (here).
UPDATE 29th June 2021
Dixons Carphone has responded to say that they remain “committed to iD Mobile and to our MVNO partner, Three UK.” The new Vodafone announcement, they add, “doesn’t impact our previous announcement or our relationship with Three.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Fantastic news but this explains why they IDMobile call centre in SA closed.
Looks like they are running it in parallel to ID for now.
My partner was with them for 12 months as they offered a £3 black Friday sim deal (down from £5) and it was ideal for him as it was unlimited calls and text and 2mb data, he stayed with them for a year until the deal ended then went back to Giffgaff. Never had a single issue with them.
This article is incorrect, id mobile and 3 this year announced a long term renewal of the mvno deal. The vodafone deals is akin to standard network deals that DC have had in the past with the likes of o2 and ee, sadly both not around anymore. A bit of research would be good before setting the cat amongst the pigeons. That being said I believe the majority of iD customers would love the partner network would change from 3 to Vodafone
I believe you’re correct. The bit that threw me in the PR was that Vodafone would become the “exclusive mobile network partner (MNO) for Dixons Carphone.”
So is this an MVNO deal or just a partnership to sell Vodafone products?
By the looks of it it’s a partnership to sell Vodafone products.
As I read it, the ‘exclusive mobile network partner (MNO)’ in this is a bit of a hair splitter, with DC and VF being exclusive, while DC own iD and iD being the ones working with Three.
I suspect (and I have absolutely no insider knowledge or anything of the sort – it’s just a suspicion), that given their recent simplification of brands, they’ll launch ‘Currys Mobile’ and slowly phase out iD Mobile through the final phase of the contract with Three, keeping both in tandem for a couple of years.
Exclusive deals never benefit customers, only benefit the businesses.
An exclusive handset means it is over priced, an exclusive network means you can’t compare and so on…
If the exclusivity deal means that Dixons gets the MNO for a lower wholesale cost, and they offer attractively proced plans to customers, then your statement is false.
Exclusive handsets in the modern market are usually just branding exercises, since it is not cost-effective to make a truly unique device for the sake of exclusivity. This means that customers always have the choice of an equivalent of better device is for the same price, also rendering that aspect of your statement false.