James Robinson, senior analyst at Assembly Research, said the trend followed well-known brands such as Tesco and Sky launching successful mobile operations that targeted existing customers with bundled packages which also included services such as broadband.
Robinson said he thought more than a quarter of all consumers could be using virtual providers by 2028 — up from 16.5 per cent in 2024. “If [Octopus and Revolut] do launch operations, those big names could accelerate that growth,” he added.
While the scale of Spain’s outage was unlike anything the country has experienced before, increasing extreme weather events are prompting governments to focus more on the resilience of telecoms networks.
In Norway, operators must fund battery backup of two hours in cities and four hours in rural areas. Australia has introduced publicly funded grants for operators to provide 12 hours of battery backup to sites in some remote areas.
The causes of the Spanish blackout remain undetermined but its scale was likely to be “a clarion call for government and regulators to pay attention to resilience,” said Grace Nelson, an analyst at Assembly Research, a UK based research company.
