(Telecompaper) The Dutch virtual operators together had 6.6 million customers at the end of March, a decrease of 11 percent compared to September 2015. The decline was caused by Tele2 becoming a full network operator in Q1 and no longer being considered a MVNO. Excluding Tele2, the virtual operators showed a small increase of 0.3 percent in customers over the six months, mainly due to growth at independent MVNOs, according to Telecompaper's latest Dutch Mobile Virtual Operators Market report. With exclusion of Tele2 as MVNO, the ranking of the biggest VOs has changed somewhat. KPN's brand Telfort (excluding its business customers) remains market leader based on the number of mobile Sims at the end of Q1 2016. The next four places are taken by Lebara, Lycamobile, hollandsnieuwe and Simyo. With the exclusion of Tele2, Simyo joined the top-five list. The top five brands together accounted for 62.8 percent of the total virtual mobile Sims, an increase from 55.5 percent at the end of September 2015. The next five brands were relatively stable, with Ben leading, followed by Simpel, Telfort Zakelijk, AH Mobiel and Ziggo. Of the total VO customers, around 3.2 million were customers with mobile operator-owned virtual brands, whose share remained relatively stable. The independent MVNOs grew organically by 1.0 percent to 3.4 million SIMs, which is about 17 percent of the total Dutch mobile market in Q1 2016.