[traceroute66]

TL;DR No, no and absolutely not.

Well established UK Wholesale operator Simwood had not one but TWO very good goes at establishing an independent low-level UK network (or at least as low-level as is possible, they wanted to become as close as was humanly possible to a full MNO).

They ended up hitting obstacle after obstacle in the usual protection racket vicious circle between so-called regulator OFCOM and the incumbent operators. IIRC they encountered difficulties at every step, be it obtaining an independent allocation of mobile numbers or anything else.

In the end, they threw in the towel on the mobile project because they refused to be "just another" MVNO reselling someone else's rebranded service.

[Nextgrid]

Do you have more info on the Simwood attempts? I'd be interested to read more.

[traceroute66]

> Do you have more info on the Simwood attempts? I'd be interested to read more.

Publicly it could be tricky. It's been a while and I'd have to refresh my mind as to what bits were confidential and what was public. Simwood are generally fairly open about talking about most things, but mobile was a somewhat special project for obvious reasons.

There is, however this blog post from back at the time (2015/2016) when they were going for it though https://blog.simwood.com/2015/04/why-simwood-mobile/ ... which contains a couple of hints at what they were attempting and the associated difficulties.

There is also a 2015 presentation lurking on YouTube that includes coverage of, in the presenter's own words, the "bureaucratic, political and just plain incompetent roadblocks that we've experienced, and continue to experience" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN-DXL8fRsU

[Nextgrid]

Thanks for the info - you mentioned a second attempt - is there any public info about it? I remember their first offering which was based on a company called Limitless which ended up going into administration, but I'm not aware of any other attempts?