Telecom-as-a-service business Gigs has signed a major partnership with telco giant Vodafone to let startups and scale-ups across the UK build their own mobile services, UKTN can reveal.

The tie-up allows Vodafone to lower the barriers to entry and reduce operational overhead for businesses to launch their own Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) using its 5G infrastructure.

The company’s operating system provides customers with a connectivity API, a hosted checkout, a multi-currency payments suite, a tax engine, a subscription and analytics platform, and AI-powered customer service—eliminating the need to hire large teams of telecom engineers, navigate compliance hurdles, or manage multiple vendors and platforms.

Gigs was unable to disclose the terms of the deal but a spokesperson told UKTN it would “unlock millions of pounds in recurring revenue” for the company.

The firm, which was founded in Berlin and has offices in London and San Francisco, raised $20m in a Series A funding round in 2022 and has been backed by Y Combinator and Google’s early-stage venture fund.

Gigs co-founder Hermann Frank told UKTN: “What Vodafone and Gigs are doing with this partnership is to open up the network to innovative new use cases — increasing the scope and competition in the market and enabling new types of ventures and mobile services.

“Now it’s not about who’s the cheapest any more, it’s about who can bundle an existing service. You can expect to see much more innovation and much more interesting types of offers on the market.”

He added that the deal “is a win-win-win for all involved. Vodafone extends its network reach to innovative tech companies with large audiences and digital distribution channels, while driving significant mobile traffic to the Gigs platform. Our customers, meanwhile, can now seamlessly bundle their existing offerings with phone plans in their own brand on Vodafone‘s premium 5G network.”

The deal comes just days after Vodafone’s blockbuster merger with Three to form the biggest mobile telecoms operator in the UK was cleared by the competition regulator, 18 months after plans for the tie-up were first announced.

Under the conditions of the merger approval, Vodafone and Three would deliver their joint network plan, setting out the network upgrade, integration and improvements they will make to their combined network across the UK over the next eight years, while also selected mobile tariffs and data plans for three years in a bid to protect affected customers from short-term price rises in the early years of the network plan.

Vodafone’s tie-up with Gigs, which lowers the costs and barriers to entry for new MVNOs, could be construed as a means to allay the regulator’s concerns over the potential harm caused to MVNOs by the merger with Three.

In its investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority had expressed fears that “faced with less competitive wholesale terms, MVNOs would be less able to compete in the retail market, particularly in the low-cost segment where they tend to operate. This would lead to greater price increases than already outlined from the direct loss of retail competition resulting from the Merger.”

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