Blyk has announced an exclusive deal with Orange UK that will see it abandon its MVNO model there.
It's the second such partnership for Blyk, which is already working with Vodafone in the Netherlands.
However, it means that Blyk will end its UK operation on 26th August. No details have been announced about how (if indeed at all) its users will be migrated to Orange - judging by the wording in the company's announcement, they'll be left to choose their own replacement provider.
Instead, Blyk will work with Orange on targeted mobile advertising, or in their words, "allowing Orange to enhance their own media initiatives by launching across a variety of mobile propositions in the UK".
Translation: sending marketing messages to yoofs, but on a larger scale than before.
"For Blyk, the MVNO enabled us to build an optimal user experience for young people while at the same time providing an engaged audience, accountability and overall media effectiveness for advertisers," says Pekka Ala-Pietila, co-founder and CEO of Blyk.
Article continues belowAdvertisement
"The Blyk media model is now proven and we are accelerating Blyk's growth through operator partnerships."
A slightly more accurate way of putting it might be to suggest that Blyk's model hasn't quite proven its ability to work on an MVNO basis, but has done enough to interest existing operators.
The last time the company announced subscriber figures, in April 2008, it had signed up 100,000 users in the UK.
