The chief executive of second placed Russian carrier VimpelCom, Alexander Izosimov, is to step down at the end of June. Izosimov will be leaving on a high, having engineered the somewhat controversial merger with Orascom Telecom parent Weather, which created the world’s fifth largest mobile carrier.
Russia’s mobile operators are moving to IP backhaul to deal with explosive growth in data traffic. Leading Russian carrier MTS (Mobile TeleSystems) said this week that it is expecting 86 per cent growth in Russian data traffic by 2015, forcing a strategic focus on network transport.
Russian network operator Yota has turned its fortunes around, having initially backed WiMAX, then switching to LTE. This week the company signed a deal with the country’s leading players, to act as the network provider for LTE services in over 180 cities with a total population of more than 70 million citizens.
Russia’s leading telecoms provider, MTS has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an international alliance of telecommunications companies committed to building a global open platform for development and distribution of mobile applications.
Russian operator MegaFon has selected Chinese vendor Huawei to construct backbone nodes for a 40Gb IP/MPLS network in Russia’s largest cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Russian operator MegaFon is to acquire Metrocom, an alternative telecoms provider in the North West region of Russia. MegaFon is expected to spend $67m on the acquisition.
Nokia Siemens Networks will set up a Global Network Operations Centre (GNOC) in Russia’s Central region. The GNOC will help telecoms operators across the region to improve the speed, quality and efficiency of their services and is expected to begin network management operations during 2Q10. The GNOC will be NSN’s fourth, in addition to two existing centres in India and one in Portugal.
Russian operator MegaFon reported a 19 per cent increase in revenues year-on-year in 2Q10 to RUB52.22bn ($1.76bn). MegaFon attributes its strong revenue performance to significant growth of its subscription base and higher use of 3G data services. At the end of 2Q10 MegaFon had 53.5 million subscriptions, giving it a market share of 24.8 per cent.
Second placed Russian mobile operator VimpelCom reported a 52 per cent year-on-year drop in 2Q10 net profit to $334.7m. Revenues rose by 23.1 per cent year-on-year to $2.64bn. Stable pricing and higher usage led to ARPU increase of 7.2 per cent in Russia.
Russian WiMAX player, Scartel, which operates under the Yota brand has finished its implementation of an LTE network in Kazan. The operator also plans to deploy further LTE networks in Novosibirsk and Samara by the end of 2010.
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