Schwarz Group, the parent company of supermarket chain Lidl, announced on Monday, April 13, 2026, a five-year strategic partnership with telecommunications firm 1Global, through which it plans to expand the Lidl Connect mobile phone service from three countries to a potential number of up to 30 markets. As part of the agreement, Schwarz Group acquires 9.9% of 1Global, a company founded in 2022 by entrepreneurs Hakan Koç and Pyrros Koussios, specializing in eSIM technology and global connectivity. «This partnership allows us to become active as a virtual mobile operator,» said Julian Beer, executive vice president for procurement at Lidl International. «Thanks to our coverage of more than 12,000 stores and more than 100 million customers in the Lidl Plus app, we are creating an attractive platform for established telecommunications companies.»
Lidl does not build networks, it will not install antennas like Orange, Vodafone and Digi, nor will it own radio frequencies. It is what is called in the industry MVNO – virtual mobile network operator: it rents network capacity from an existing operator and resells services under its own brand, at usually lower prices. An MVNO has no physical infrastructure – it operates on someone else's network, but under its own brand, with its own tariffs and client application. In Romania, an MVNO that seriously tried this model was Lycamobile – but it failed. The Lidl Connect service already exists in three markets: Germany, where it uses the Vodafone network; Austria, on the Drei infrastructure; and Switzerland, on the Salt Mobile network. Until now, all three were prepaid offers – without long-term contracts – with an emphasis on low price and simplicity. In Germany, a card with 15 GB of data costs 8.99 euros per month, and from 2023 customers have access to Vodafone's 5G network.
The extended model will be different, however. According to Handelsblatt, Lidl wants to move from being a simple card reseller to an operator with its own control over rates, technology and the relationship with the customer. The focus is on offers based on eSIM – a digital SIM card, integrated into the phone, which no longer requires a physical plastic card – with flexible data rates, international use without roaming barriers and options that can be activated at short notice without commitment. Through the agreement with 1Global, Lidl will enter into partnerships with local operators in each target country. 1Global already has agreements with operators in 12 countries and plans to expand to over 30. The company will provide the technological platform and be the exclusive partner for the Lidl mobile service. The move was first reported by the Financial Times on 12 April 2026, before official confirmation the following day. Lidl is not alone in this endeavor. The Financial Times notes that the retailer is the latest in a wave of non-telecom companies entering the mobile services market: fintech platforms Revolut, Klarna and N26 have launched or are launching similar offerings, and British digital bank Monzo was in the «early stages» of a similar project in August 2025. They all follow the same logic: cheap, contract-free mobile services designed to increase customer loyalty and diversify revenue.
Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at CCS Insight, a telecom market analysis firm, commented that Lidl's entry into new markets will intensify competition for incumbents, who are already facing the threat from fintech. Mann added that it will be interesting to see if Lidl will integrate telephony with supermarket services – which, surprisingly, it has not done even in the three markets in which it already operates. The move into telecom is not isolated, but is part of a wider Schwarz Group strategy to build a digital ecosystem around its 14,000 Lidl and Kaufland stores. Through the Schwarz Digits division, the German group has already become a European provider of cloud computing and cyber security services and an investor in artificial intelligence companies. Mobile is the next layer.
«Many apps are rarely opened. A supermarket app is opened almost every day,» wrote Hakan Koç, founder and CEO of 1Global, on LinkedIn, explaining the logic of the partnership. «Easily accessible mobile connectivity is becoming part of everyday life for millions of people.» 1Global is not a start-up at the beginning of the road: the company has 450 employees, offices in 12 countries and holds telecom operator licenses in over 40 states. It was founded in 2022 by Koç – who previously founded Auto1, one of the largest European used car sales platforms – and Pyrros Koussios. In January 2023, 1Global took over the assets of Truphone, a British telecom operator specializing in roaming and eSIM for corporate customers. According to Handelsblatt, Schwarz Group is paying around 80 million euros for the 9.9% stake, which values 1Global at around 800 million dollars. 1Global's supervisory board is headed by Hannes Ametsreiter, former managing director of Vodafone Germany – a signal that the firm is attracting people with direct experience in the network operator industry. Romania is one of the 32 markets in which Lidl is present – with approximately 400 stores at the end of fiscal year 2025. It's just that Romania is a telecom market that has proven hostile to virtual operators.
Lycamobile – the largest MVNO in the world – closed its operations in Romania at the end of 2023, after eight years and cumulative losses of around 60 million lei. At the time of departure, all virtual operators in Romania (Lycamobile and Benefito Mobile) together had a share of 0.2% of the 24.3 million SIM cards, i.e. under 50,000 customers, according to ANCOM data from the first semester of 2023. The explanation is structural, not conjunctural. «The telecommunications market in Romania was and remains one of the most competitive in Europe», commented Bogdan Belciu, partner and co-founder of Valorem Management Consulting, for ZF. «In the last 15 years, there has always been at least one operator in the market who competed very aggressively on price – some even assuming very large losses that they never recovered.» The average revenue per user (ARPU) in Romania remains among the lowest in Europe, with mobile subscriptions available from 2 euros per month. «It is very difficult for a virtual mobile operator that does not have a network to be able to offer the same traffic volume of traditional operators at the same price, because there are inherent costs», said Marian Velicu, co-founder of Veridian Systems and chairman of the board of MVNO Benefito Mobile, during the ZF IT Generation show.
However, Lidl would come with an asset that Lycamobile did not have: a network of almost 400 physical stores and an already built Lidl Plus user base – exactly the lack of a distribution network and a differentiation strategy beyond price had been identified by Belciu as one of the fundamental problems of MVNOs on the local market. There is currently no official confirmation that Romania is among the markets targeted by Lidl in the first wave of expansion.
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