Wireless Federation

Norwegian telecoms group Telenor has announced that it has dropped a long-running legal case in which it objected to Vimpelcom’s 2005 purchase of mobile operator Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS, now rebranded under the Russian cellco’s Beeline trademark), reports the Moscow Times. However, Telenor said it would persist in seeking legal redress in other ongoing disputes with its Russian investment partner Altimo, the telecoms arm of conglomerate Alfa Group, which has a controlling stake in Vimpelcom. The dispute between Altimo and Telenor arose from differences over the strategy and control of Vimpelcom and Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile operator by subscribers. Altimo and Telenor own 37.7% and 26.6% respective stakes in Vimpelcom, whilst Telenor controls 56.5% of Kyivstar, with 43.5% of the company owned by Altimo; Vimpelcom owns 100% of URS. Alfa also has an indirect interest in another Ukrainian GSM operator, Astelit, through its stake in Turkey’s Turkcell, and a 40% stake in WiMAX provider Ukrainian High Technologies (UHT, Alternet), via its Russian Technologies venture fund, whilst Golden Telecom, which offers fixed and mobile services in both Russia and the Ukraine, is another regional player co-owned by the pair (Alfa 30%, Telenor 20%).

Vimpelcom spokeswoman Yekaterina Osadchaya yesterday welcomed Telenor’s decision, saying that it ‘vindicates our position that we were doing the right thing all along,’ whilst Altimo vice-president Kirill Babayev said his company would welcome future cooperation with Telenor. Relations between the two sides have deteriorated to the point that Telenor has been forced to omit Kyivstar’s results from its financial reports, and Altimo has consistently boycotted shareholder meetings at the Kiev firm, which has been forced to operate without a board of directors. Telenor has called a Kyivstar shareholders meeting for next Monday to resolve corporate governance issues, including re-electing a board, although according to the Moscow Times, neither the Oslo-based group nor the Russian investor has expressed any confidence in an immediate breakthrough being reached. The paper said that Altimo had declined to confirm whether it would attend the meeting.

Telenor has filed a series of lawsuits in Russian courts against Vimpelcom’s USD231 million purchase of URS in an effort to invalidate the deal, on the grounds that the price was excessive and that it already had a presence in the country via Kyivstar, but all the legal bids failed. A New York arbitration court last month ordered Alfa to sell its stake in Kyivstar to a non-affiliated company within 120 days or to relinquish certain holdings in rival Ukrainian operators, but the jurisdiction of the court was questioned by the Russian company. Telenor’s head of Russian operations, Kjell Morten Johnsen, said in an interview given to Russian newspaper Vedomosti yesterday that his company is prepared to drop its ongoing legal actions against Altimo with respect to disputes over its jointly-held Ukrainian assets, if Altimo agrees to abide by the New York court ruling, and stop blocking attempts to elect a board of directors at Kyivstar.

Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
 

Russia’s No.2 mobile phone operator Vimpelcom (VIP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is to set up a mobile services joint venture in Vietnam and will invest up to $1 billion in a GSM mobile network there over the next few years.

Vimpelcom said in a statement on Wednesday it would only hold minority voting rights in the venture, GTel Mobile, in line with Vietnamese law, but under the deal will be entitled to the majority of profits.

The venture will be the first expansion step by Vimpelcom outside Russia and the CIS, the home market for the telecoms major, which is looking to diversify at a time when mobile telecoms markets of Russia and Ukraine are close to saturation.

“Vietnam is a very attractive market, with a growing population of approximately 85 million people and mobile penetration of approximately 32 percent,” said Chief Executive Officer Alexander Izosimov.

Vimpelcom said a company owned by the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam and U.S. Millennium Global Solutions Group Inc. would be its partners in the joint venture.

Vimpelcom, which operates under the Beeline brand, is owned by Russia’s Alfa Group and Norway’s Telenor

Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
 

Telegeography writes…Mobile operator Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS), which operates under the BeeLine brand, has expanded coverage of its Wi-Fi hotspot service to nine major cities: Kyiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Lvov, Simpheropol, Ivano-Frankovsk, Nikolaev and Kharkov. URS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Russia’s Vimpelcom, operates a GSM network that now covers 507 cities and towns and more than 7,000 localities.

Wireless Mobile Telecom

Kiev, August 18, PRIME-TASS. According to a study carried out by ComNews Research, Ukraine’s content services market volume stood at around 30 million dollars in the first six months of 2006, excluding indirect gains from mobile marketing and content sold independently of mobile operators.

Analysts state that the five leading content providers control 48 percent of the market. Jump Ukraine holds the top position for the first half of 2006 with 17%, while the daughter company of Russian provider Inform-mobile comes in second with 12%. The Ukrainian branch of the Russian company Solvo International takes 8%, and Ukrainian content providers Point Com and Dnepr Telecom have 7 and 4 percent respectively.

The success of the top five is mostly attributable to their participation in projects to provide content under mobile operator’s brands or sub brands: Kievstar, Djuice, JEANS, UMC and Beeline.

The Ukrainian daughter companies of Russian market leaders i-Free, Infon and Logoton were in the next five, along with UPT-Mobile and Mobiline Media. Their appearance in the rating highlight trends in the development of the Ukrainian mobile content market. UPT-Mobile specialises in WAP projects and partners with the majority of popular Russian WAP sites. The content provider Mobiline Media is an offspring of ‘1+1′, one of Ukraine’s largest TV channels.

ComNews Research analysts predict that providers specialising in WAP projects will see a long-term growth in market share. They also foresee the migration of successful content projects to WAP, conditional to operators opening WAP-CPA. Media projects will also enjoy an increased share, although they are overly tied to competing media such as television and printed publishing, whose ratings are difficult to predict.

The analysts consider the Ukrainian content services market attractive for investment, and expect to find such major Western players as Jamba and Jet Multimedia entering the market in the near future.

Source- http://world.procontent.ru

Technorati : Beeline, Djuice, Dnepr Telecom, JEANS, Kievstar, Mobile, Point Com, Russia, Solvo International, Ukraine
Ice Rocket : Beeline, Djuice, JEANS, Kievstar, Mobile, Russia, Solvo International, Ukraine