Last week, Rostelecom connected its millionth cellular subscriber, operator representative Valery Kostarev told Vedomosti. This happened in the Sverdlovsk region, he clarified. At the end of March, Rostelecom had about 877,000 mobile subscribers, according to the operator’s report.

Rostelecom launched the virtual operator in November 2016. He spoke about connecting 500,000 subscribers in August 2017. On the networks of T2 RTK Holding (Tele2), 45% of the shares of which belong to Rostelecom, the virtual operator operates in 65 regions of Russia .

Rostelecom does not disclose the financial indicators of MVNO. If we assume that the average monthly subscriber bill approximately corresponds to the same indicator for Tele2, in 2017 the Rostelecom virtual operator earned about 1 billion rubles, calculated Sova Capital analyst Alexander Vengranovich. Telecom Daily CEO Denis Kuskov agrees with this assessment. 1 billion rub. – this is approximately 0.3% of the total revenue of the state operator.

Rostelecom is a communications company and, unlike virtual operators that came from other markets, it knows well how to work with subscribers, explains the reasons for the growth of the subscriber base, Alexey Chernetsov, director of the Rostelecom MVNO services project office. The operator has a large base of wireline users and is focused on offering them cellular services, he notes.

Since Rostelecom is the largest fixed-line operator in Russia, it was possible to gain a significant base of cellular subscribers quite quickly, agrees TMT Consulting CEO Konstantin Ankilov.

Rostelecom . became the second Russian virtual operator to surpass the 1 million subscriber mark The first was Megafon's subsidiary Scartel (since 2014 it has been operating on its networks as an MVNO under the Yota brand). The company announced the connection of its millionth subscriber in August 2015 and since then has not disclosed its subscriber base. According to preliminary calculations by TMT Consulting, at the end of June this year Scartel had about 5 million subscribers (1st place in Russia by this indicator). Rostelecom is in 2nd place, and 3rd is occupied by MGTS , which operates on the network of its parent MTS . At the end of the first half of the year, MGTS had more than 425,000 MVNO subscribers, says operator representative Tatyana Martyanova.

MVNO for Rostelecom and other fixed-line operators is primarily a tool for maintaining subscriber loyalty and reducing their outflow, notes Kuskov. It is more difficult to refuse several services under one contract than one, he explains. At the same time, fees for cellular communications allow operators to slightly, but still increase income in a market that is practically not growing, argues Kuskov. But in general, such proposals do not yet affect the cellular market, as well as the fixed-line market, he concludes.

Rostelecom gained 1 million mobile subscribers