Revenues for the leading Russian mobile service providers are expected to grow an average of 10% over the next 3-4 years, according to a JPMorgan report cited by Russian business daily Vedomosti. Operators spent the previous year recovering from the crisis, but from Q3 2009 the average growth rate for revenues increased from 1.5 to 9%. Analysts expect that mobile data transfer services will lead growth while revenues from traditional voice services will grow by only 5% per year.
Representatives of MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom emphasize the priority of developing third generation mobile communication networks (3G), but shy away from assigning revenue growth projections for such development. MTS, which came close to loosing its leadership position to MegaFon for revenue from mobile services last year, plans to invest in 3G this year to catch up on the cover.
Development of 3G networks was launched in Russia only in 2009.
Investors are less optimistic – according to VTB Capital analyst Viktor Klimovich, they expect no more than 5% growth because they do not see a business model where usage growth for data services will translate into significant revenue growth. On the contrary, he noted that investors are concerned about increased overheads for mobile operators to finance extending 3G-networks.
Source: Vedomosti
