Tele2 looks for acquisition opportunities in Central Asia to compete with TeliaSonera (Europe)
Sweden based telecom firm, Tele2 is reportedly looking for acquisition opportunities in Central Asia, in an attempt to better compete with rival operator TeliaSonera. According to reports, Tele2 had acquired a majority stake in Kazakhstan’s wireless operator NEO, in March 2010.
As per sources, Lars Nilsson, CFO, Tele2 has said that countries in the vicinity of Kazakhstan can always be of interest as long as the market is not too small. He added that the target markets need at least 1 million potential customers for Tele2 to make an investment worthwhile. Further, reports suggest that Tele2 has more than 1 million Kazakh customers and expects to reach as many as 2.5 million by the end of 2012.
TeliaSonera currently operates in the regions of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. As per reports, it is looking to increase its stake in partially owned companies and is currently investing more in Kcell.
Sources claim that Telenor has been focusing on India and regions in Southeast Asia for opportunities in the emerging markets. According to reports, Richard Olav Aa, CFO, Telenor said that he expects Indian authorities to create more transparent rules for mergers and acquisitions within the next three years, and the company would be able to engage in mergers if it meets its 2013 breakeven goal.
UCell introduces night internet tariff (Uzbekistan)
UCell, which operates in Uzbekistan, has introduced a new night internet package called ‘Internet Mega Boom’.
The new package will be charged at US$0.05 per MB between 1am and 8am, while the daily fee will be US$0.10. Activation of the tariff is free.
The company has also announced that it has signed bilateral roaming agreements with KPN in the Netherlands (for GPRS and 3G) and Celtel in Zambia. Furthermore, prepaid UCell customers can use Wataniya Telecom’s network in Kuwait.
MTS Uzbekistan Q1 subscriber base rise by 3.6%
MTS Uzbekistan has reported that its total revenues for Q1 rise by 1.2% year-on-year to US$104.7 million.
According t the company,revenues fell by 10% during the quarter, due to seasonal and competitive factors as well as lower subscriber activity.
OIBDA was almost flat year-on-year at but declined by 8.7% sequentially to US$56.6 million, while the OIBDA margin slid 0.5 percentage points year-on-year to 54.1%.
ARPU reached US$3.9 at end-March, compared to US$4.6 in December 2010 and US$4.8 in the first quarter of 2010.
MOU declined to 402, from 461 in December 2010 and 520 in March 2010, while the churn rate increased to 9.2% from 6% in Q4 2010 and 5.9% in Q1 2010.
The operator saw its subscriber base increase by 3.6 percent sequentially to 8.79 million in the quarter.
Moblika introduces International Flat 150 option (Germany)
MVNO Moblika will be introducing a new international calls package dubbed International Flat 150 for 1 June.
This new package will allow users to utilize 150 minutes for calls to the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Georgia and Uzbekistan for US$13 per month.
The MVNO will provide two EU roaming tariff options providing 50 roaming minutes for US$7 per week and 50 MB for data roaming for US$7 per week.
The EU roaming packages can be ordered together or in combination with other Moblika tariff options. Moblika offers low-cost international calls starting at US$0.07 per minute, while calls within Germany or sending SMSs (within Germany and abroad) cost US$0.18 per minute or message.
Calls between Moblika customers will come with a price tag of US$0.07 per minute and each call abroad has a set-up fee of US$0.18.
A Moblika starter package including Sim card with US$14 call credit costs US$13 and is available at selected retailers including E-Plus shops.
Moblika is based on the tariffs offered by E-Plus’s international discount MVNO Blauworld and is a subsidiary of German low-cost international calling services provider Eco World Connect.
Opera Mini browser surpasses 107.1 mn users mark in April
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.
UCell starts More Communication tariff promotion (Uzbekistan)
UCell, which operates in Uzbekistan, has started promoting its ‘More Communication’ tariff.
Subscribers who sign up for the tariff before 5 June will receive 50 on-net minutes, 50 national SMS messages, and 50 MB of data. The bonuses are valid for seven days.
SmartLabs enabled MTS Home TV subscribers with Omlet.ru
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 Uzbekistan overhauls SMS bundles
Beeline Uzbekistan has launched a new SMS package deals. The operator will provide 100 local SMSs for US$0.95, $500 SMSs for $3 , and 1,000 SMSs for $5.
Packages with 25 international SMSs can be had for US$1.25, with 50 international SMSes and 2,100 international SMSes for US$3.
Beeline Kazakhstan introduces Easy Roaming service
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.
Ucell launches new payment method (Uzbekistan)
Ucell haslaunched a new payment method for prepaid subscribers. Customers calling on their home network can charge calls to the number they are calling.
