Methodology

How records in this dataset are built, what the confidence markers mean in practice, and what is still open.

Scope

In: entities that sell or carry mobile service to Israeli subscribers, and the spectrum that carries it.

Out, but recorded in out_of_scope_plmn so a stray MCC 425 code always resolves:

• Palestinian operators sharing MCC 425 (Jawwal, Ooredoo Palestine).
• Telematics and M2M operators using cellular for their own devices rather than selling subscriptions (Ituran).
• Government assignments (IMOD).
• Infrastructure identities that are not retail brands (PHI Networks).
• Business telephony and connectivity providers with an assigned PLMN but no mobile offering (Voicenter, Maskyoo, Beezz, Voye Global Connectivity).
• Assignments with no identifiable retail presence (Alon Cellular, Gale Phone, B.I.P Communications, CG Networks).

The last group is the softest. Some may be live MVNOs whose retail brand was not identified; several were assigned before the 2015 spectrum tender and may simply be dormant. Moving one into operators needs evidence of an actual retail offering, not just a PLMN.

Confidence

Attached to individual values, not whole records. A record can hold a confirmed PLMN and an inferred band in the same object.

Level	Means	Typical source
confirmed	Stated by a primary or regulatory source	ITU bulletin, MoC notice, listed-company reporting
reported	Stated by a credible secondary source	Reuters, Globes, Developing Telecoms
inferred	Deduced from adjacent facts, stated nowhere	—
unverified	Placeholder, treat as unknown	—

How this falls out in practice:

• PLMN assignments — almost all confirmed. The ITU publishes them.
• 5G band holdings — confirmed. The 2020 auction outcome is documented by the ITU and corroborated in trade press.
• 4G band holdings — mostly reported. The only per-operator sources are crowd-maintained frequency databases, several of which have not been updated for the 2G/3G shutdown.
• 900 MHz post-shutdown refarming — inferred, status: unknown. The spectrum was freed; who redeployed it, and to what, is not published.
• Subscriber counts — one confirmed (Pelephone, from Bezeq's reporting), the rest reported press characterisations.
• MVNO host attribution — reported at best, one low-grade case. See below.

The MVNO hosting problem

Israel publishes no register of wholesale agreements. Host attribution for nine MVNOs rests substantially on a single undated SIM retailer's blog, which is the only source located that maps every named Israeli MVNO to a parent network.

That source is a tertiary one. It is used because the alternative is leaving host_mno null across the board, which would gut the dataset's main purpose. The mitigation is that it is marked as such, every host resting on it alone is reported or lower, and contradictions are preserved in disputed blocks rather than resolved by picking a favourite.

The exception is 012 Mobile: Partner owns 012 Smile, so the host relationship follows from corporate structure rather than from an unsourced claim.

If you can improve one thing in this dataset, improve this. Ministry of Communications wholesale-agreement filings, operator interconnect disclosures, or an ARCEP-style regulatory dataset would upgrade nine reported values to confirmed in one pass.

Recording disagreement

Where sources contradict, the record carries a disputed block: each claim with its own sources, plus a resolution stating which was adopted and why, or null if unresolved. The validator warns on unresolved disputes.

Three live disputes:

1. Marathon 018 Xphone's host — ITU places it in the Cellcom 5G bidding group; consumer sources call it an MVNO on Partner. Adopted Cellcom, on the primary source. Unresolved as to whether a Partner wholesale arrangement also exists or once did.
2. Home Cellular's host — one source says Cellcom, others name no host. Adopted Cellcom by default. The weakest attribution in the dataset.
3. 019 Mobile's host — Partner vs "Hot Mobile and Partner". Resolved: these describe the same physical network, since Partner and HOT share a RAN through PHI Networks.

Things that are easy to get wrong

Collected because each one cost time to establish, or was found wrong in a published source.

• Legal names differ from brands. HOT Mobile is Mirs Ltd. in ITU records; 019 Mobile is Azi Communications Ltd.; Marathon 018 Xphone traded as We4G. Searching ITU lists by brand name misses them.
• MCC 425 is not Israel-only. It is shared with the Palestinian operators, and ITU publications list them under the Israel heading.
• FDD bandwidths are paired. Israeli auction reporting says "2×10 MHz"; bandwidth_mhz in this dataset records 10. The factor-of-two error is easy to introduce.
• All three groups won identical 5G allocations. Coverage that reports only one operator's holding reads as though they differ.
• GSM/UMTS is gone. Several third-party frequency databases still show 2G and 3G bands as live for Israeli operators, more than half a year after the 31 December 2025 shutdown.
• RAN sharing is not passive infrastructure sharing. The 2022 MoC approval covering Cellcom, Pelephone and PHI Networks is site and mast sharing. It does not merge radio networks, and reading it as though it does collapses Israel's three networks into one.
• Group figures may or may not include acquired brands. Whether Cellcom's subscriber count folds in Golan Telecom is not stated by any source located, and the numbers do not obviously reconcile across years.

Open questions

Ordered by how much they would improve the dataset.

1. A primary source for MVNO host networks. Upgrades nine attributions at once.
2. Current status of the Pelephone / HOT Mobile acquisition, and what happens to the PHI Networks joint venture with Partner if it completes.
3. Per-operator 900 MHz refarming after the 2G shutdown.
4. Whether 2600 MHz has moved from LTE (B7) to NR (n7/n38) as the auction anticipated.
5. Outcome of the 2023 mmWave auction.
6. Subscriber counts for any MVNO. None currently carry one.
7. Whether B32 (1500 MHz SDL) is genuinely deployed or a database artefact.
8. Retail status of the dormant-looking PLMN assignments in out_of_scope_plmn.
9. TADIG roaming codes beyond Cellcom's ISRCL.

Maintenance

Every operator record carries last_verified. When you touch a record, move that date and add or update the sources behind whatever changed.

Run the validator before committing:

python3 scripts/validate.py

It fails on broken cross-references, PLMN arithmetic errors, duplicate PLMNs, an MVNO nested under the wrong host, and band lists duplicated onto an operator that inherits from its host. It warns on unresolved disputes, missing last_verified, and sources registered but never cited.