Coming Soon Lycamobile Canada
 

With credits to Hartie over on Howard forums. Lyca's corporate site was just upgraded to say:

[Fluff deleted]

"Perhaps most significantly, 2013 saw us activate our biggest market launch to date: introducing the service to the US with the promise to bring an unparalleled level of cost and quality of service to American consumers. Set to double our business revenue over the next financial year, Lycamobile USA launched in March as the country’s first full MVNO, operational in 18 states with plans to expand this to 25 states in 18 months.

We are now the largest low-cost international call provider by geography in the world, but we won’t stop there. We have identified eight further territories in which we would like to be operating by February 2014 to include Canada and markets in Latin America and Asia. A 5,000 strong global team this February celebrated reaching our target of €1 billion turnover for 2012/2013. We fully expect these plans to give rise to the doubling of this figure by year end 2014."

I note that Lyca just launched an Italian MVNO in November.

In November they've also launched their Austrian operations: http://www.telegeography.com/product...no-in-austria/

What does this even mean? If they are only in 18 states that doesn't mean full coverage.
What could this possibly mean and be true?

A full MVNO is such who operates its own core network which includes interconnections with other operators and basicly only uses the radio access network (read "cell towers") of a "real" mobile network operator (MNO). A light MVNO in contrast does fully make use of an MNO's infrastructure and sells services under its own brand. They may operate their own billing system, customer care and sometimes even an own HLR, but all the switching occurs on the underlying MNO's infrastructure.
A full MVNO can theoretically switch its MNO partner and subscribers can keep their numbers, while a light MVNO is totally dependant on its MNO partner.

OK. That actually makes sense. And seems to be true that Lycamobile uses its own infrastructure.
Nothing else in the USA comes to mind.

Let me ask you about Lyca's 18 US states. Let's assume that I am visiting another state which TMobile has towers. Won't I still be able to use the phones in those jurisdictions even though Lyca may not have phone numbers for those states, dealers, or other related facilities which would be consistent with operating in those markets?

I think the 'lack' is only phone numbers to give and the ability to port where they don't have 'facilities'. I have heard no one claim that they were not able to use their phones. One thread on Howard Forums has
.
No one saying the network of T-Mobile does not work.

P.S.: Another significant difference between a light and a full MVNO is that the latter has its own MCC/MNC tuple (Lyca uses 311-960 in the US) and SIM cards are attached to it rather than to the underlying MNO's tuple (IMSIs start with the MCC/MNC tuple of the issuing operator). The differing MCC/MNC tuple of the SIM card (or rather its IMSI) and the underlying network will cause most phones showing the roaming icon and in consequence disabling data since comparing the MCC/MNC tuple of the SIM card with that of the current network is how a phone determines if it's on roaming or on its home network.

It is too bad that using roaming data switch is a yes/no option and that you can't say treat certain partners as non-roaming. For example, I live in the US State of Michigan. I'm 20 minutes from the Canadian border and would want that to be flagged as roaming. In certain parts of town it is real easy to accidentally lock on a Canadian signal. For example, there are two offices and one restaurant where I can almost guarantee it. I used to also have the problem in my old barber's chair.

If I was with TMobile-US, there are parts of my state where I would roam on ATT which would be on plan. It would be nice to not have to think about this.

I have ATT's closed iPhone International plan (and pay extra for Canadian voice coverage) so I don't have to think about this, but when my wife stops her Canadian assignment, I'll probably cancel the Canadian voice coverage (particularly if Canada becomes a Toggle country).

So they're a billion-dollar company with 5000 employees expecting 200 percent growth over the next 12 months. How come their websites - the core customer interface of their business - contain such basic errors? (For example, having to add a zero to the beginning of a US number to log in?)