Armentel, which operates in Armenia, has lowered roaming rates for its subscribers travelling in Georgia.
The service will be available when using the Mobitel’s network, which operates in Georgia. Incoming calls and outgoing calls to Armenia and within the network of Mobitel are offered for US$ 0.18 per minute. No activation or subscription fees are charged.
VivaCell-MTS, which operates in Armenia, has rolled out mobile internet packages promotion. Customers who subscribe to the MTS Connect tariff plan or a 3G router package will get anti-virus software (Dr. Web) for PCs for free.
MTS Armenia has stated that its Q1 revenues declined by 8.4% year-on-year to US$0.04 billion.
The company stated that it saw a 15.7% drop in revenues sequentially, negatively impacted by seasonality and competitive factors. OIBDA fell 4.4% year-on-year and 15.9% sequentially to US$0.02 billion, reflecting revenue dynamics.
The OIBDA margin raised by 2.2 percentage points to 51 percent from 48.8 percent in the year-ago period. MOU was flat sequentially at 294 but increased year-on-year from 220 in March 2010. The churn rate declined to 6.7% from 7 percent in Q4 2010 and 8.6% in Q1 2010.
The operator saw its subscriber base increase by 3.6 percent sequentially to 2.55 million at end-March.
Opera Mini browser had over 107.1 million users in April an increase of 4.6% from March. With this percentage Opera Mini browser has grabbed the top position as the world’s most popular mobile browser.
Indonesia and the Philippines are on top of user participation on social networks. More than 77% of mobile web users in these countries visit Facebook.
Opera Software itself has more than 400,000 users on Facebook alone. The top ten countries using the Opera Mini browser in the region are Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan.
From April 2010 to April this year, page views in the top ten countries of the CIS increased by 198 percent, unique users increased by 65 percent and data transferred increased by 176 percent.
SmartLabs has announced that subscribers of interactive digital television MTS Home TV have now gained access to the Omlet.ru multimedia entertainment directory.
Since 2009, Omlet.ru offers access to a wide variety of multimedia content. It has gained popularity and earned the trust of its users by high video quality and wide choice of content. In view of this, MTS decided to integrate Omlet.ru into the MTS existing IPTV service to further enhance its digital TV offering actively promoted under the MTS Home TV brand.
To provide the Home TV services, MTS applies the SmartTUBE SDP converged platform from SmartLabs, a leading technology provider for IPTV operators. Hence Omlet.ru movies section merger with MTS Home TV required integration of SmartTUBE platform with this portal.
To solve this task, SmartLabs experts developed the mechanism to import the data from the Omlet.ru storage to MTS and to provide Home TV subscribers with access to the constantly updated catalogue of video content. Also, this involved embedding of the Omlet.ru access application into SmartTUBE UI application used in MTS Home TV set top boxes.
As a result of the project, the subscribers of MTS Home TV in Moscow and the Moscow region have got an access to a huge collection of Omlet.ru videos. MTS subscribers can pay for the service from their mobile accounts. For third party subscribers, SMS payments are supported. The new service runs on all set top boxes provided by the operator for the MTS Home TV service.
“The key goal of SmartLabs is to offer our customers – IPTV operators – new opportunities to grow their business. With flexibility and power of the SmartTUBE SDP platform run by MTS, you can easily and quickly expand the list of available services, as again proven by embedding the Omlet.ru application into the MTS Home TV service,” SmartLabs CEO Mikhail Grachev says.
“Each user of MTS Home TV can now push a button and easily gain legal access to Omlet.ru new and bestseller videos. More than 2.8 million families have become MTS TV viewers in Moscow and across Russia. We see a great potential in growing this audience by evangelizing digital TV, providing legal content and easy-to-use mobile payments, as well as telco’s bundled offerings,” MTS New Media Director Inna Shalyto said.
About the companies
Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (“MTS”) is the leading telecommunications group in Russia and CIS. MTS serves a total subscriber base of over 100M subscribers (MTS Belarus exclusive). MTS and its branches provide GSM services in 82 Russian regions, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine and Uzbekistan; UMTS services in all Russian regions, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus; CDMA-450 services in the Ukraine. Also, MTS offers fixed voice and cable TV services in all the federal regions of Russia, in Ukraine and Armenia. MTS pay TV audience has exceeded 2.8M households, and its broadband subscriber base is 1.8?. For the third year in a row, MTS was named Russia’s most valuable brand, according to BRANDZ™ 2010 Top-100 list published by the Financial Times and Millward Brown, a leading global market research and consulting firm. Since July 2000, MTS has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker MBT. For more details, please visit www.mts.ru.
SmartLabs is a Russian company and a leader in the development of service delivery platform for interactive digital television (IPTV, DVB, hybrid, satellite, Internet TV), innovative client applications and user interfaces, next generation STBs, and other innovative solutions for service providers and enterprises. For more details, please visit www.smartlabs.tv.
Beeline Kazakhstan has launched the new Easy Roaming service for its subscribers.
Incoming calls and outgoing calls to Kazakhstan as well as outgoing calls within the country of location are offered for US$0.26 per minute rate.
The offer is available by the Beeline network in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Georgia, as well as using Beeline and Kyivstar networks in Ukraine.
A recent report by Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has revealed that around 208 operators are now investing in LTE, which is 98 operators more than in June 2010.
According to the report, the number of countries and territories where LTE systems are deployed or planned has increased by 32 in the same period.
The report confirms 154 firm LTE network deployments are in progress or planned in 60 countries, including 20 networks which have commercially launched. A further 54 operators in 20 more countries are engaged in LTE technology pilot trials or tests.
Taken together, it means that 208 operators in 80 countries are now investing in LTE. The report covers both LTE FDD and LTE TDD systems. The 60 countries and territories having firm LTE network commitments are Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong S.A.R., Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore , South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, UAE, UK, Uruguay, USA, and Uzbekistan.
LTE networks are launched in 14 countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, USA, and Uzbekistan. GSA forecasts that at least 81 LTE networks will be in commercial service by end-2012.
VivaCell has reduced the price of the BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone to US$563.67 to $241.57 for customes signing a one/year contract. When signing an 18 month contract, the device costs US$134.21.
Orange Armenia is offering all customers of its Let’s Talk prepaid tariff plans bonus on-net minutes for use on weekends each time they recharge their account with minimum US$2.69.
Bonus minutes are valid 31 days after the day of recharge. In parallel, Orange has completed the portfolio of its recharge cards with a new one having a value of US$2.69 and a validity period of one month.
The new scratch card is already available in 78 Orange shops as well as in more than 7,000 points of sale.
