Russia Telecommunications Report Q4 2011

Thursday Nov 24

Russia Telecommunications Report Q4 2011

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Russia Telecommunications Report Q4 2011" report to their offering.

BMI's Q411 report on the Russian telecommunications market contains updated forecasts and market data covering the mobile, fixed-line and broadband markets. It also includes the first set of operational and financial results from the reorganised Rostelecom, and the first set of VimpelCom results incorporating the newly acquired assets of Wind Telecom. BMIs forecasts and market analysis are based on operator data through to the end of June 2011.

At the end of Q211, Russia had 222.7mn mobile subscribers, equivalent to a penetration rate of more than 155%. The mobile market experienced growth of 5.6% y-o-y in the 12 months to the end of June 2011. After experiencing a return to positive subscriber growth in H210, three of Russia's leading network operators - Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), VimpelCom and Tele2 Russia - continued growing positively in Q211; however, some of the growth was the result of acquisitions by VimpelCom and Rostelecom. However, MTS experienced negative q-o-q growth of 0.6%, losing 420,000 subscribers. Despite Russia's high mobile penetration rate, BMI maintain BMIs view that positive subscriber growth will continue for the duration of BMIs forecast albeit at a slower rate than that experienced over the past five years.

BMI believe they may be seeing the beginning of an era of slower growth in Russian mobile. The 12 months ending June 2011 have seen an average q-o-q growth rate of 1.4%, This is a marked slowdown from average q-o-q growth of 1.8% in the 12 months ending June 2010, and 3.3% in the 12 months to June 2009. BMI believe the lower rate of growth is both a function of a shrinking pool of customers to sell services to and the period inactive SIM discounting they expect from operators. Meanwhile, BMIs broadband subscriber forecast for Russia envisages almost 20.9mn broadband subscribers at the end of 2011.

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