www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The subscribers’ base of Armenian cellco K-Telecom (trading as VivaCell-MTS) reached 2.1 million on February 28, 2010.
75% of the domestic mobile market had been controlled by VivaCell-MTS at December 31, 2009. With 19% market share, the mobile arm of national PTO ArmenTel (Beeline) was close to MTS and it was followed by market newcomer Orange Armenia with the remaining market share. Orange signed its 200,000th subscriber just last month having launched services on November 5, 2009.
Given the threat posed by its rivals, VivaCell-MTS is now looking to new, advanced technologies to maintain its competitive edge. Plan to deploy 4G mobile broadband services based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology in 2010 has been recently revealed by the company.
Out of 2.045 million-strong customer base of the cellco, around 600,000 subscribe to some form of data product (i.e. GPRS, EDGE or UMTS technology), including around 400,000 3G subscribers.
VivaCell is a subsidiary of Russian powerhouse Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS), a leading telecoms operator in Russia and CIS countries.