Octopus-Backed Y Corp Still Looking to Launch UK Mobile Provider
A couple of weekend newspaper reports have stated that the Fern Trading (Octopus Group) backed Y Corporation appears to still be gearing up to launch a new UK mobile operator of their own, which would be backed by a virtual operator (MVNO) agreement with Three UK. But readers of ISPreview will know that they already tried this last year (here) – leaving many early adopters confused.
According to the FT (paywall), which itself followed a report in the Sunday Telegraph, Fern has approached Three UK (soon to be merged with Vodafone) to explore the plans, with Y Corp already having an existing wholesale arrangement with the network operator as part of its branded MVNO offerings to businesses.
However, both articles seemed to be unaware of the fact that Y Corp already attempted this with a confusing “beta” launch at the end of 2024, which wasn’t initially promoted as a trial to early adopters. The new Ymobile service first went live in November 2024 by claiming to be the UK’s “first data-led, eSIM MVNO” (here), all while claiming to offer users a “simpler, more streamlined and environmentally friendly” alternative to traditional operators.
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The plans they offered reflected a simplified range of 30-day 4G and 5G capable data-only (mobile broadband) eSIM plans (e.g. £5 for 10GB and up to 100GB for £15). But a month later (Dec 2024) the Y Mobile website suddenly vanished, while early adopters were informed that the service was in a “beta phase” (not something they mentioned in the original press shot) and the operator had “decided to temporarily pause Ymobile’s service“. Customer plans were then “terminated” in January 2025 (here).
A spokesperson for Ymobile told ISPreview in Dec 2024:
“As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering an outstanding mobile experience, we have decided to temporarily pause Ymobile’s service while we prepare for the next stage of its development.
This decision follows the completion of our beta phase, and we now begin our process of developing a more robust and advanced version of Ymobile for launch in the near future.
All of our current users’ contract agreements have been fulfilled, and the service is now in the process of being paused.
We appreciate all our users’ trust and understanding as we take this step, which will enable us to offer them an even better service moving forward. We will keep all our users updated on our progress, and we look forward to starting this new chapter in our journey soon.”
Suffice to say that this was no way to launch a new retail service into the market and will have done the company some damage, although they also clearly indicated their intention to prepare a “more robust and advanced version of Ymobile for launch in the near future“. But to be fair, they did issue refunds and gave the right amount of notice.
According to the latest newspaper reports, Octopus appointed Adam Dunlop, the former TalkTalk Consumer Chief, as a Director in January to explore the plans (the same month they terminated the old service) and still appear to be preparing to go live with a new service in the near future. But they’ll need to do something special to make up for the messy first attempt, which isn’t easy in today’s already quite diverse mobile market.
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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Does the market really need another MVNO? It’s pretty crowded now and BT/EE are reportedly looking to launch their own budget product to compete with the likes of Smarty & Voxi.
Depends on how long Vodarubbish keeps Smarty, once they have merged they may get rid of smarty. I will stay with smarty as long as Vodarubbish don’t muck things up.
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I reckon they’ll keep smarty. It’s growing rapidly and has surpassed 1 million users.
Remember at the moment they actually have two of their own MVNOs.. voxi and talkmobile.
Not many people know about talkmobile, it’s older but they seem to have lost interest in it. I think it’s more likely they’ll scrap that instead and continue with voxi and smarty
@Chris, it is not just about keeping Smarty, it also depends on what they do with the infrastructure, Vodarubbish is awful around here, so if they close down some of Three masts, we are stuffed.
The only reason I will stay with them if are still okay is because.,
(1) I can’t be bothered to move
(2) If they keep the price and service I pay, then it is fine for me
(3) The other mobile network companies, I have about as much time for as I do for Vodarubbish.
We will see what happens, if I did not need a mobile phone, i would do away with it, I said that about broadband, just another cost
Thanks for the helpful information, our manager is investigating the ISP’s cited after reading the comments. We also just looked on Pages 84-93 in the 2024 Fern Annual Report which refer to Giganet and Park Broadband ISP’s as “Fibre Network Production”. Could anyone explain if these ISPs are like Cuckoo, because I have advised many investors toward Octopus who are responsible for managing an “Infrastructure Fund”. It really looks to me like Fern shareholders have been helping grow ISP sales rather than energy transition, building fibre networks or running retirement living. You also mention “Brill”, does anyone know if this company is a fibre asset or another consumer ISP?
I wouldn’t mibd if EE launched a budget option – match 1p mobile and i’ll join them, as I wouldn’t mind having RCS messaging on iOS
Not missing much with RCS, better off with SMS,
Not everything rings true with Octopus / Fern in the Telecoms Industry.
I think we can all expect Y Corp to be rolled into All Points Fibre / Cuckoo etc. at some point, because why wouldn’t Octopus want to bundle more services for their customers?
But here we are with another Octopus company treating customers badly, just like Cuckoo.
To remind anyone who doesn’t remember, Cuckoo, which is seemingly the current retail brand for Octopus’ broadband company (with All Points Fibre as the “wholesale” company), dumped their entire existing wholesale (Openreach-provided broadband circuits) customer base onto Home Telcom (who themselves apparently do not have a good reputation) with little or no warning. And then to turned around and signed a new Wholesale deal with BT Wholesale just a couple of months later to provide Openreach-provided broadband circuits.
These decisions seem to make little sense.
Except that a big part of Octopus’s business model appears to require that they control the narrative, in the media and on social media, regarding how they are perceived for customer service and satisfaction.
Again, if you want to see what is under the surface at Octopus, log into Glassdoor and read the employee reviews.
But what I don’t understand is Octopus’ branding choices.
First we have Cuckoo, as in you would have to be Cuckoo to take broadband from Cuckoo. And now we have Y Corp, as in Y would you take mobile from Y Corp.
Octopus’ branding just seems weak and awfully ill-conceived.
They also purchased Brill, another broadband ISP. Cannot wait for them to start using a word that died sometime in the 80’s (for good reason) in their branding.
100% on the branding. It makes little sense, unless you look inside to the Cuckoo culture – it looks like one of those “down with the kids” type cultures.
But branding has to look outside first, inside second (well, so I’d have thought as a non-marketeer). In which case everything you say about Cuckoo is true. Plus, don’t forget the cuckoo is a bird that throws all your babies out of the nest.
It’s made even more confusing by Fern Fibre Trading having another retail brand at the time (and actually the one that bought Cuckoo) which does what it says on the tin – Giganet.