Newsletter
As of December 4th, T-Mobile’s MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) Solavei is no longer offering service. Following the collapse of Solavei, the company notified customers to either switch their phone numbers to a new provider, or move to T-Mobile who is offering users $10 monthly credit. In addition T-Mobile is giving users a free month of service to migrate to their network. T-Mobile unfortunately isn’t saying how many new customers they have gained from the Solavei collapse but it would make sense for users to switch to them since they are the parent network.
Solavei which is one of the many MVNO’s offered here in the US, came into being in the Fall of 2012. Since Solavei is considered a MVNO since they use T-Mobile’s network to get users connected, the concept is similar to MetroPCS and Cricket Wireless. They even offered similar deals as Metro and Cricket where users could pay just $45 a month for complete service. Solavei’s reign was short lived because in the summer of 2014 the company went bankrupt. There lack of customers was the problem, Solavei didn’t have enough users to keep the company going much longer. How many customers did they have exactly? Just about 100,000 which doesn’t sound like a lot compared to other carriers who have well over millions. Before there downfall it was reported that with just 140 employees, Solavei was valued at just $120 million. With hopes of staying alive, Solavei made plans to join forces with a Netherlands-based company. The company in mind was ASPIDER and it probably would have helped Solavei get out of bankruptcy court.
To keep things short and sweet, Slavei never merged with ASPIDER because T-Mobile ended the agreement they had. With Solavei out of the picture, all of their former users are now looking for a new home. Solavei customers were given the option to transfer their numbers to a new carrier or simply join T-Mobile’s network. Apparently there were 400,000 customers using Solavei services so its questionable whether or not that small sprinkle of customers transferred to T-Mobile, nor will the company in Pink tell us. It’s quite possible that T-Mobile received a huge growth from the MVNO shutdown due to the great offers they gave out.