SK Telecom Mulling Bid for Kazakhstan Mobile Network

South Korea's SK Telecom has confirmed that it is interested in bidding to buy Kazakhstan's Mobile Telecom-Service, but has not made a decision yet. Last month, Kazakhstan's dominant landline operator, KazakhTelecom announced plans to sell its 51% stake in its mobile phone network subsidiary, Mobile Telecom-Service - which trades as Neo.

"Our company is considering whether to participate in the bidding," said SK Telecom spokeswoman Lauren Kim, but added that "we are just reviewing whether we would submit the letter of interest to bid,"

Neo is the smallest of the country's three GSM networks, and estimates from the Mobile World put its subscriber base at around 1.25 million at the end of Q1 '09. This represented a market share of 8.1%. The two other operators are Kazakhstan-Rumeli Telecom, controlled by Russia's Vimpelcom and GSM Kazakhstan (Kcell), which is controlled by TeliaSonera's Fintur Holding.

On the web: Neo - Mobile World

Posted to the site on 14th July 2009