ESPN announced that it was pulling the plug on its MVNO venture. This is an unfortunate trend since MVNO’s are new service and application vendors best shots at getting into the market place. Since MVNO’s, by definition, are marketing oriented, they should, in theory, be more willing to integrate new apps or services. However, the carriers have realized that while they like the notion of selling profitable, wholesale minutes to MVNO’s who then do the expensive customer acquisition dance, they also found that they were increasingly competing against the carrier for its retail customers. As a result, most carriers have ramped (or shut) down their MVNO programs. Existing MVNO’s are finding customers expensive to acquire and, like ESPN, have some tough decisions ahead. This also unfortunately leaves mobile app developers with having to deal with the galatial carriers for scaling…ouch. More to come on this topic.