MAP > Internet Providers in Russia

Russian telecom market continues to be among the largest in Europe, well supported by the population of close to 144 million. Market has been dominated by western regions, where main cities, as well as the economic centers, have concentrated. All the sectors have been liberalized with the competition very prevalent in St Petersburg and Moscow, the two largest regional markets. The Telcos have continued to deploy as well as modernize the fixed line network infrastructure to be able to offer more improved broadband services, and the range of the IP delivered content. The government has been investing very many billions of Rubles in the 200,000 kilometers telecom network that is going to offer the broadband services to the thousands of the underserved villages, with the Rostelecom being contracted to undertake as well as manage this work.

Russia has been able to emerge as among Europe’s fastest growing markets for the fiber-based broadband with close to two-thirds of the Rostelecom fixed line broadband of subscribers being on the fiber infrastructure by late 2018. This county owns the largest mobile market in Europe with the number of subscribers standing at 226 million at the end of 2018. Numerous mobile network operators are very active, although the market has been dominated largely by four major operators mainly; MTS, Tele2 Russia, MegaFon and VEON. They have expanded the footprints widely through the acquisition of the smaller regional service providers.

The mobile sim card penetration has been on the rise through the rate has fallen in the recent quarters as the customers reduce the number of the Sim Cards while in use. This is a response to poor economic climate, as well as to the better pricing among MNOs that reduces on net call charge advantage of having the Sim Cards from the various providers. ‘Extensive deployment of the LTE infrastructure has supported development opportunities through the data services as well as mobile broadband, that make up the growing proportion of the overall mobile revenue. The investments in the carrier aggregation, as well as the LTE-A technologies, have also boosted the network capabilities while the operators are also going ahead to partner with the vendors to be able to prepare 5G.

This report offers an overview of Russia’s fixed-line telecom as well as IT markets. It does include information on the key regulatory developments, the data on the fixed line networks and the assessment of the telco’s financial as well as the operating performance.