Lyca Mobile UK Appoints New Senior Leaders to Aid Growth
Mobile operator Lyca Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on EE’s platform in the UK, has today bolstered its senior leadership team by appointing Lawrence Corbett as Group Chief Operating Officer, and James McQuillan as the new UK and Ireland (IRE) Country Manager.
The operator has been in the process of adopting a new strategic direction for the business since it announced Richard Schafer as Group CEO in June 2023. But their reputation took a hit in October 2023 after it was revealed that a series of network connectivity problems had been linked to a major cyberattack and personal data breach (here).
In terms of the new hires, Corbett in his role as Group COO will have overall responsibility for all Group Operations and P&L management for Lyca’s UK and overseas operations. Corbett brings his experience from the MVNO sector, having spent a large part of his career at Virgin Media, firstly working within several Virgin Mobile businesses and then later as an Investment Director in Virgin Group’s Investments Team helping to start up, fund and structure new Virgin telecoms businesses globally.
Meanwhile, McQuillan joins as the new UK and IRE Country Manager at Lyca Mobile, bringing with him more than two decades of domestic and international experience working in telecoms and eCommerce businesses, including AOL, TalkTalk, Tesco Mobile and Rohlik Group (Czech Republic) etc.
Richard Schafer, Group CEO of Lyca Mobile, said:
“Lyca Mobile is all about delivering exceptional value to our customers. And as the world’s largest MVNO, we have built a loyal customer base by delivering reliable, low-cost international calling. Focusing on our three priorities of value, customer service and reliability are central as we take on the established operators. With this in mind, I’m delighted to have Lawrence and James join our senior leadership team here at Lyca, bringing with them decades of experience and know-how across telco and ecommerce – not just in the UK, but from key global markets.”
Given the focus on customer service and reliability, we wonder how long it will be before they provide a fresh update to clarify precisely what personal data was actually compromised in last year’s attack, how many customers were impacted and what they’ve done to prevent it happening again. In the past, when other broadband and mobile operators have faced such problems, they’ve usually been a lot quicker to investigate and report back.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Nothing is saving Lycamobile
Apart from the proven senior leaders on the way through the doors it seems.
“Apart from the proven senior leaders on the way through the doors it seems.”
presumably there’s money in the bank account that needs to be spent on wages this financial year. 🙂
Ok guys, so next time we get hacked worldwide, we can’t ghost all the customers and leave them unable to top up and disconnected
* whole room stares *
“That’s not how it works around here”
lol
Seems like Lyca have now started supporting VoLte and WiFi calling.
Sim Ordered….. again…. issue last time was lack of VoLTE, if thats resolved it will do nicely as my seperated voice and data back up @ £2 a month, I’ll let Vodafone take care of the important calls and data though, EE just lacks that little bit in comparison.
Is it? I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max with a Lyca esim, I use to have the option to enable volte, that’s now gone with the option to select either 2G, 3G, or 4G.. my iPhone on Lyca always use to display LTE rather then 4G, that’s now changed. VOLTE isn’t working for me, it still switches back to 2G when I make a call, the only positive thing I’ve noticed is my call connection times, use to take up to 30 seconds, now it’s about 10..
I also now have the option to enable WiFi calling, it would always fail before, however that doesn’t seem to be working either!
They’ll need all the help they can get, no VoLTE or wifi calling…. The number ports are days later than stated
How many numbers you ported to insinuate thats the normal?
“How many numbers you ported to insinuate thats the normal?”
Probably at most one, considering how hard it is to even port a number IN to Lyca and the major risks involved.
Your just making claims they’re incompetent, yet they have an international presence, they’re using a leading UK network for performance and are still growing in numbers.
Hope they fix the high latency issues.
Worst company ever
My husband was with them and they didn’t take the card payment during their recent troubles and then cut of his ability to make and receive calls
We ported it the minute it was possible
So left because of the one off issue making the chances of that reoccuring higher if the new network hasn’t faced that same issue ‘yet’ (Thumbs up)
“So left because of the one off issue making the chances of that reoccuring higher if the new network hasn’t faced that same issue ‘yet’ (Thumbs up)”
The entire network failed. Lyca had one job, to run a network but not only did they fail at that, they failed at any form of communication about the issues. Only a fool would rely on them now for anything important.
Let;s be clear it wasn’t the whole network, because other users including a sim I had myself was still active and working…. lets bare in mind the same issue happen with Three recently, issues like this have also struck Vodafone, O2 and EE in the past so nobody is immune to these sorts of problems.
It is good and handy to make a call Abroad as you can get international Bundles on Top on Lyca Mobile. Especially if you want or need to make a call to your Family and Friends all over the World. Now I can make a call to my Family in Ireland. But when will they set up international Bundles in Costa Rica, Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Tunisia, Morocco and Brazil in the future?
Why is my Lyrca line can’t work in Nokia c10
Not 4G device, you may be in an area without 3G or your settings are restrciting access to the network.
Someone should ask how much they paid the hackers to get their data back? As ex Lyca employee that company is toxic and should be struck off. Just have a look at all the senior managers that have come and gone from there over the past 5 years. Anyone with half a brain gets out of there as soon as they can.