I'm moderating a press roundtable on MVNOs at 3GSM

Just a quick heads-up to journalists & others interested in MVNOs - I'm going to be moderating this event on behalf of billing vendor Highdeal on the Tuesday afternoon in Barcelona.

The discussion will cover both today's MVNO marketplace (are there enough profitable niches? and what do you need to be able to address them?) , and possible future virtual operator models. I'll be hoping to drill into themes such as the role of advertising, and what my friends at Telco 2.0 refer to as "two-sided business models", with payments flowing in multiple directions from multiple parties. There's also a question of how MVNOs fit into a mobile landscape where many other aspects are being outsourced or virtualised - think Nokia Ovi, and the roles of Apple, Google et al.

The increasingly competitive and highly-segmented approach by some of the MNOs is also forcing their virtual rivals to address ever-finer-grained mechanisms for carving out addressable sectors. This requires some sophisticated back-office systems, as well as the more bricks-and-mortar approach to effective distribution via retail or other channels.

On the technology side, I expect the panel may also touch onto other themes such as 3G MVNOs, how IMS & MVNOs fit together (or not), and some of the interesting developments I'm seeing around FMC-based MVNOs. A number of companies have talked to me recently about blending dual-mode handsets, their own VoIP skills, and a cellular virtual component (BT Enterprise Fusion, TDC Zoo, Telio etc).