| The operator's revenue per subscriber continues to fall Yesterday, VimpelCom shared with journalists the results of its work last year. Like MTS and Megafon, its profits grew over the past year, while average revenue per subscriber fell. The company was actively moving beyond Moscow, but management does not yet know how to continue further territorial development. Also, the good results were somewhat spoiled by the news from Gossvyaznadzor, which continued to “establish order” with Bee Line’s Moscow licenses.
The operator's net profit for 2003 amounted to $234 million, which is 80% more than the previous year. Profit before taxes for last year was $613 million - 90% more than the year before. “These are very good figures, they even exceeded our expectations,” says Aton analyst Nadezhda Golubeva. At the same time, the average monthly return per subscriber (ARPU) decreased from 18.3 to 13.6 dollars. NIKoil analyst Vladimir Bogdanov believes that the reason for this is the low tariffs that the company has set in new regions. And according to Ms. Golubeva, the fall in ARPU is “a normal phenomenon that will continue until market saturation occurs.”
According to representatives of VimpelCom, their company still retains leadership in the Moscow market: the share of the operator’s subscribers out of the total number of metropolitan cellular users is 49%. True, MTS still considers itself a leader, and does not trust the calculations of its competitors.
As for the regions, in this regard, last year was very successful for the operator - the company entered the North-Western and Ural regions. As a result, the Bee Line network operates in 56 regions of Russia and the company has licenses for another 18 regions. VimpelCom is doing best in the Volga region, where the operator has taken a leading position with a 30 percent market share, and worst of all in the Far East, where Bee Line simply does not exist. The operator tried to enter this region both by obtaining new licenses and by purchasing local operators. So far, all these attempts have not been successful. “Without the Far East, a mobile operator cannot be called national,” admitted VimpelCom President Alexander Izosimov yesterday. But he did not report specific steps to correct the situation. Also, the operator is in no hurry to develop the markets of the CIS countries, while MTS is already operating in Ukraine and Belarus.
Last year was not without some strange things. Representatives of VimpelCom noted among the most important events the appearance of the Bi+Hit tariff, to which about 3 million subscribers connected. Despite this, connection to the tariff was closed for some reason six months ago. Apparently, it did not live up to financial expectations.
One symbolic event occurred in 2003: VimpelCom, which began operating in Moscow using the DAMPS standard, completely switched to GSM, and sold its original network to Corbine Telecom. On Wednesday, this story continued: the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the claim of Gossvyaznadzor against Corbina and fined it 30 thousand rubles. The fact is that Corbina, without a license for the DAMPS standard, connects and services subscribers of this network.
This situation is very reminiscent of the story with the Moscow GSM license of VimpelCom. At the moment, the operator has won all cases related to this problem. However, according to some market participants, it is too early to say that the incident has been resolved, and the operator’s “enemies” continue to look for new loopholes. What happened with Corbina Telecom is further confirmation of this. So Bee Line decided to hurry up with the renewal of the Moscow license for the GSM standard - yesterday the operator’s board of directors recommended that the relevant issue be brought to the shareholders’ meeting. Igor KOROLEV |
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