Mobile phone industry in Russia
Mobile phone industry in Russia is an trade industry of
History
In 1963,
Initial selection of technological mobile standard in Russia had been left for market forces by issuing licenses for different standards. Later, regulatory authorities have developed stricter policy. However, there still exists a great variety of both analogue and digital standards. NMT standard was a first generation analogue mobile technology that still has footstep in Russia, employed by commercial mobile operators since the early 90s.[3]
Regional operators have deployed the
In 1994, a joint venture of
In 2002, MegaFon was formed to provide all-Russia service, amalgamating Sonic Duo of Moscow, Mobikom-Novosibirsk, and other companies.[7] In that year also, the number of mobile subscribers in Russia soared by 130% to 18mn, implying penetration of 12.3%, compared with 5.4% at the end of the previous year. The continued strong growth of the cellular subscriber base was largely due to the accelerating regional rollout of the major national cellular operators. In 2007, MegaFon started Russia's first 3G service in Saint Petersburg.[8]
Russian
On the Amur Highway at the beginning of October 2011 MTS, Vimpelcom and Megaphone completed the construction of a joint network to provide mobile communication. Operators built across the highway 102 towers (of 140 towers) for base stations, 32 of which have launched MTS and "MegaFon" and 38 by VimpelCom, now Veon Ltd (due to the fact that it has only in the Far East 3G licenses, and in some regions of the Federation, GSM-1800).
The 2012 tender of the Ministry of Communications awarded licenses to deploy LTE networks in the lower (720–790 MHz, 791–862 MHz) and upper (2500–2690 MHz) bands to the "big 3" (Megafon, MTS and Veon) and to the national fixed-line operator Rostelecom. Each of the winners relies on two lanes wide in the upper range of 10 MHz and 7.5 MHz in the lower. The upper range of frequencies considered to be free and is suitable for deploying LTE. However, the lower, mostly occupied by the security forces and navigation and radar systems.[9]
On September of that year
In November 2013 Megafon began to provide the
In December 2013, Minister of Communications,
Mobile phone service providers
There are four nationwide mobile phone service providers who possess 2G and 3G licenses in every region of Russia (so called Big-4):
MTS
As of June 2012, MTS was the biggest mobile operator in Russia in terms of subscriber base with 69.6 mln subscribers (31% market share). It also had 35,7 mln subscribers in several CIS-countries, including Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus.[15] As of January 2012, MTS had 2.1 mln residential fixed broadband subscribers (11% market share) being the biggest player on the Moscow market (940,000 subscribers, or 27% market share).[16]
Beeline
As of June 2012 it had 55.7 mln subscribers in Russia (24% market share in terms of subscribers)[15] and over 209 mln subscribers worldwide.[17]
MegaFon
MegaFon (in Russian: МегаФон) is owned by Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov. The company provides 2G (GSM) and 3G (W-CDMA) mobile phone services. In April 2012, MegaFon was the first of Big-3 operators to launch 4G services.[18] It is the only Big-3 company which remains private, yet rumours about company's possible IPO were circulating for several years. In June 2012 (after significant changes in shareholders structure)[18] MegaFon confirmed that it is looking for going public in second half of the year in case market conditions will become «favourable»[19]
As of June 2012, MegaFon had 55.7 mln subscribers in Russia (27% market share). Unlike MTS and Veon, Megafon has neither developed operations outside Russia (it has only 1.6 mln subscribers in Tajikistan, Ossetia and Abkhazia)[15] nor has focused on residential broadband services (its market share is below 4%, with most of subscribers in Moscow).[16]
Tele2 (Rostelecom)
Rostelecom the largest fixed-line operator and former monopoly, together with its subsidiary
Mobile phone industry
The mobile phone service provider licensing in Russia is under the control of Rospechat, the
For new technologies, Russia's mobile phone industry has depended on overseas companies.[22] For example, in 2009, MegaFon revealed that Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) was selected as the winner of its tender to building 3G network and that the following companies together would collaborate on MegaFon's 3G deployment and upgrades until 2010:[23]
- Nokia Siemens Networks(NSN)
- Huawei Technologies
- Alcatel-Lucent
- Ericsson
- ZTE
The Russian mobile phone service operators have been active in their presence in the
On December 4, 2013, the first Russian smartphone, Yotaphone was launched. The idea of YotaPhone was created in Russia, but manufacturing and assembly of the phone is done in China.
Russian manufacturers
- Beeline
- Explay (become subsidiary of Fly in 2015[28])
- Gresso
- Highscreen
- Megafon
- MTS
- RoverPC
- teXet
- Sitronics
- Yotaphone
Number portability
Number portability officially became available in Russia on December 1, 2013. An appropriate legislation signed into law by President Vladimir Putin a year earlier, on December 26, 2012. Operators have repeatedly stated that the time allotted is not enough to run services.[29] Within 12 days since the law came into force, 9090 subscribers filed applications to move to another operator, of which only 57 until satisfied.[30]
See also
- Telecommunications in Russia
- Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of Russia
- List of mobile network operators of Europe#Russia
- Telephones portal
- Russia portal
- Mobile phone industry in Ukraine
References
- ^ "A glimpse into the Russian smartphone market".
- ^ "First Russian Mobile Phone – English Russia". Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ Nordiac Mobile Telephone
- ^ Global System For Mobile Communications
- ^ "History". Archived from the original on 9 March 2010. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ History of VimpelCom Archived 2009-10-26 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ History of MegaFon Archived 2010-02-14 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ MegaFon starts 3G network. Archived 2010-03-12 at the Wayback Machine (2007)
- ^ "263 LTE-сети запущены в коммерческую эксплуатацию". comnews.ru. 21 January 2014. Retrieved 22 January 2014.
- ^ "MTS launches first TD-LTE network in Russia". 22 September 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ ""МегаФон" добавил еще LTE". comnews.ru. Retrieved 16 November 2013.
- ^ "Минкомсвязи верит в LTE". comnews.ru. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
- ^ "Операторы завладели трассами". comnews.ru. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
- ^ "Russia's Scartel to launch LTE networks in six cities on Wednesday". PRIME. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
- ^ a b c d "Data Downloads". Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ a b "Downloads – Broadband Statistics". Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ "VimpelCom". Archived from the original on 2 April 2013. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ a b MegaFon launches 4G services via Yota; resolves ownership disputes
- ^ "MegaFon CEO sees unfavourable markets for IPOs". 5 June 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2016 – via Reuters.
- ^ "Дочка "Ростелекома" начала тестирование сети 3G+ в Красноярске". comnews.ru. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
- ^ "CDG : Worldwide : Worldwide". Retrieved 15 June 2016.
- ^ Russia's three providers plan 3G
- ^ MegaFon's 3G plan (2009)
- ^ "Как и зачем делают двухсторонний YotaPhone 2". www.gq.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2019-02-28.
- ^ "Производство YotaPhone 2 – как это происходит?". yotaphone.com. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
- ITAR TASS. Retrieved 14 December 2013.
- ^ "Russian PM Medvedev receives dual-screen YotaPhone". Pravda. Retrieved 14 December 2013.
- ^ ""Связной" продал Explay". Retrieved 10 September 2016.
- ^ "Абоненты начали голосовать ногами". comnews.ru. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
- ^ "MNP разменяла первые десять тысяч". comnews.ru. Retrieved 14 December 2013.