Embarq is the latest MVNO to drop out

MVNO dropping out of the game. I’m a firm believer that MVNOs can work, and the current environment isn’t helping my case. Rather than list the ones that have bitten the dust recently, I’ll just get to the newest one: Embarq. The spin-off of Sprint has announced that they will cease all sales after unloading their current inventory. So it’s not that they’re going dark. And, apparently, it looks like Embarq wasn’t bleeding money like other MVNOs. This is a bit from the linked Telephony Online article, which seemingly paraphrases Embarq’s CFO, Gene Betts: “Existing customers are still profitable, so they will remain under the Embarq umbrella at least until 2009, when the company will weigh whether transferring them back over to Sprint.” Once again, that is not a quote from Betts, but rather a paraphrase from Telephony Online. The issue, really, is level of profitability. The company only has 112,000 subscribers, but was built for about a million. So while they’re making money from those 112,000 customers, clearly they’re not making enough for the endeavor to be worthwhile any longer. Embarq still plans to offer its TV, phone, and Internet services. It also has plans to offer find me/follow me services, which is basically an advanced form of call forwarding. ]]>