Built in, not bolt on: Meaningful Planet at MVNOs World 2026

In early June, the MVNO community came together in Amsterdam for MVNOs World Congress 2026. The event brings mobile network operators, MVNOs, platform providers, vendors, analysts and industry specialists into one place to discuss where the sector is heading next.

Meaningful Planet was there to contribute to that conversation. Our co-founder and CEO, Nick Falkowski, gave a presentation as part of the Operational Models stream: “Built in, not bolt on: What building a sustainable MVNO taught us about the future of telecoms.”

The presentation focused on a practical question: what changes when sustainability is not treated as a separate campaign, claim or reporting exercise, but as part of the way a telecoms business is built from the beginning?

As Nick put it in the presentation: “We use sustainable thinking as a design principle, rather than an add-on or a layer at the end. In telecoms, that means it has to shape the commercial model, the customer experience and the operating decisions from the beginning. Otherwise, it remains a claim rather than part of how the business actually works.”

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Sustainable telecoms cannot sit outside the business

Nick’s starting point was that much of business sustainability still happens around the edge of a company.

It appears in reports, brand language, carbon statements or annual initiatives. Some of that work is useful. But when sustainability sits apart from the commercial and operational model, it can easily become fragile. It depends on messaging rather than structure.

For a mobile provider, sustainability is not only about what sits on a corporate responsibility page. It is reflected in how the service is built, how customers are billed, how SIM estates are managed, how waste is reduced, how devices are sourced, how contracts are structured and how claims are evidenced.

That was the core point of the presentation: better telecoms will not come from adding purpose at the end. It will come from building it into the model from the start.

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Why the market is moving on sustainable telecoms

Nick also highlighted that this is not only a values question. It is increasingly a commercial, regulatory and procurement question.

PwC’s 2024 Voice of the Consumer Survey found that consumers were willing to spend an average of 9.7% more on sustainably produced or sourced goods. While that is a consumer signal, the same direction of travel is visible in business procurement. EcoVadis’s Sustainable Procurement Barometer found that69% of organisations weighed supplier sustainability performance when selecting suppliers and renewing contracts, up from 51% in 2019.

Regulation is moving too. Under the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority has stronger consumer enforcement powers, including the ability to fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for consumer law breaches.

The point Nick made was not that sustainability automatically wins every deal. It does not. Price, service quality, reliability and simplicity still matter.

The point was sharper than that: vague claims are becoming less useful, and less safe. Buyers increasingly want suppliers who can show how responsible choices are reflected in the actual operating model, not just in external messaging.

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What this means for business mobile

Business mobile is often more complicated than it needs to be.

Many small and mid-sized organisations still manage mobile estates through spreadsheets, legacy portals, unclear bills, manual change requests and contracts that are difficult to understand. That creates operational waste before we even get to environmental waste.

Time is lost. Spend becomes harder to control. Unused SIMs keep running. Roaming costs appear too late. Decisions are made without clear data.

Nick’s argument was that these issues should not be treated separately from sustainability. They are part of the same problem.

As he put it: “A badly managed mobile estate does not only waste money. It wastes time, attention, data, devices and energy. The commercial inefficiency and the environmental inefficiency are often symptoms of the same underlying problem.”

That is why Meaningful Planet has built around three principles: Simpler, Smarter and Fairer.

Simpler means less operational complexity for customers. Smarter means better data, spend controls and estate management. Fairer means clearer pricing, more flexible contracts, less waste, and carbon-neutral connectivity. We offset 100% of our calculated emissions through UK-based projects certified under the UK Woodland Carbon Code and the IUCN UK Peatland Code, and as a certified B Corp we support the wider nature restoration and biodiversity work of regional Wildlife Trusts.

The aim is not to create a conventional telecoms product with a sustainability message attached. The aim is to build a better operating model, where customer clarity, commercial efficiency and lower waste point in the same direction.

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A business mobile platform with software at the centre

One of the recurring themes at MVNOs World was the changing role of software in mobile. For newer providers, the question is no longer only which network infrastructure sits underneath the service. It is also what kind of customer experience, operating layer and data model sits on top.

Nick highlighted this as central to Meaningful Planet’s approach.

We run on EE infrastructure, but the part we are building ourselves is the software and service layer that makes business mobile easier to manage. Our telecoms and SIM management platform is designed to give customers clearer oversight of their SIM estate.

That is where the “built in, not bolt on” idea becomes practical.

Sustainability does not need to sit next to the product. It can live inside the product. It can show up in clearer oversight, fewer unused SIMs, more transparent billing, smarter spend controls, better device choices and more accountable claims.

In other words, sustainability becomes more durable when it is connected to the everyday decisions customers and providers already need to make.

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What we took from Amsterdam

A key message from the presentation was that telecoms should not pretend this is easy.

Mobile is a complex sector. It has real infrastructure constraints, commercial pressures, wholesale dependencies, regulatory requirements and legacy systems. Any serious sustainability argument has to acknowledge that - and that is also why the operating model matters so much. If sustainability is only thought of once the systems are already built, it will usually remain vulnerable to cost pressure, operational complexity or changing priorities. If it is designed into how the business works, it has abetter chance of long-lasting impact.

The most useful conversations at MVNOs World were not only about sustainability. They were about the operating models that will define the next generation of mobile providers: platform-led services, clearer customer value, better use of data, more flexible propositions and more honest relationships between providers and customers. This is the space and future vision Meaningful Planet is working towards.

Being part of MVNOs World 2026 was a useful chance to share where we have got to, hear from others across the industry and test our thinking with people who understand how hard it is to build well in this market. The future belongs to businesses that put delivering better outcomes for their customers, wider society, and the planet at their core.

Meaningful Planet is a UK business mobile network provider and technology platform built to make telecoms simpler, smarter and fairer.

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