Who are the Fastest Growing Networks in Russia/Central Asia?

The chart below shows the ten fastest growing businesses in the Russia and Central Asia (RCA) region. What is perhaps most interesting here is the decline in growth seen at the three of the large Russian operators. MegaFon took the top spot this quarter, but its connections are down by more than 50% year on year from nearly 3.0m to 1.25m. This is the best performance of the three - eighth placed MTS has seen a drop of more than 80% to 280k, and Vimpelcom, something nearer 90%, to 200k, which is only enough for tenth place. The smaller Russian operators have not been so badly affected, with second placed Tele2 actually up, year on year in terms of new connections, from 638k to 644k.

The Svyazinform companies added 410k new customers, which makes them the fourth fastest growing mobile business in the region, but there is little date that the period of spectacular customer growth in Russia is now over.

Elsewhere though, outside Russia, the growth rates all seem to be accelerating. All of the other companies on the list show marked year on year increases. KarTel from Kazakhstan, which takes third place, added 68% more customers this quarter than it did in Q1 06, with 519k registered additions. This is equivalent to more than 13% growth. Some of the edge is taken off this achievement when one looks at actives, but even on this more conservative basis, the increase was 448k - nearly 15% of the active base as at December 2006. Fifth placed Unitel in Uzbekistan (the former Daewoo Central Paging) has seen a massive acceleration over the course of the year, with 406k new active customers, equivalent to 58% of the starting base at the beginning of the quarter and a 439% improvement, year on year.

GSM Kazakhstan came close to matching Unitel's number, with 388k adds in the quarter, a 278% rise year on year, which suggests that the Swedish owned business is looking to underline its position as market leader now that Kazakhtelecom has entered the market. The final two places are taken by Afghan Wireless and Uzdunrobita, the MTS subsidiary from Uzbekistan. The Afghan company saw nearly ten times as many new connections in Q1 2007 than it did in the prior year and is continuing to experience rapid growth. Uzdunrobita is a more mature company, or perhaps, more established than Afghan Wireless, but it too achieved a huge year on year increase, with 250k net additions against 91k in 2006.

Penetration in most of the "other" countries in this region is well below the 108% currently seen in Russia, with only Georgia (45%) and Kazakhstan (53%) anywhere close. Some idea of the kind of potential that exists here can be derived from the fact that it took the Russian market just two years to go from penetration in the low teens to 50% and only two more years to go from 50% to 100% penetration. Afghanistan (9%), Uzbekistan (12%) and Tajikistan (13%) are all on, or close to, this launch pad and together, they have a population of 65m.

Posted to the site on 18th July 2007

 

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This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.

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