The first global attemp of achieving convergence in Russia was Golden Telecom purchase by Vimpelcom. It is clear (at least for me) that one of main reasons for that was desire to get extra money from owned company. Altimo got approximatelly $1,128 billion income on this deal. Vimpelcom top managers are still concerned with economic effect of this merge, they confirm that it still didn't achieved. During development projects for new services Vimpelcom managers seldom think about convergent effect. At the moment corporate structures continue to merge and the only effect is in the single procurement and problems with areas of interests dividing among managers.But I'm pretty sure that Vimpelcom will manage to build effective mechanism of joint effective business.
MTS approached this theme in more practical way. There is a convergence department and business marketing department that more or less coordinate decisions with Komstar. Today there are a lot of publications and information regarding close merge of MTS and Komstar. Again there is a big desire for this not only because of getting convergence effect but for getting extra money from MTS (AFK Sistema owning Komstar needs extra funds).
Megafon is famous for its inhouse development (as you could see from retail structure development, a lot of development projects) and I think they will make something on their own basis. But during strategy presentation Megafon CEO told that they plan to invest $500 mlns on convergence and maybe we will see aquisition. At the moment Komstar and Megafon discuss buying Synterra.
I'd like to point out new directions for business development after convergence for MNO.
First of all fixed network operators (Komstar and GT) own widespread networks and magisterial licences - it could bring additional cost saving opportunities for MNO. Vimpelcom is already trying to transmit long distance calls through GT networks (frankly speaking it is additional point of failures because GT magisterial channels are not broad and reliable enough).
Second opportunity is in aligned distribution of services (cross sales) - corporate subscribers of fixed operator could be offered with cost savvy proposals from MNO. Thats why in St. Petersburg MTS is partnering with Severo Zapadniy Telecom (SvyazInvest subsidiary in North West region). In case of deep integration and special IT solutions corporate subscribers could be offered with broad range of integrated services like corporate PBX (with mobiles on special short numbers), mobile offices and so on. Homeowners could be offered with single package of broadband Internet, IPTV and mobile services. IPTV is very interesting for MNOs because it could provide content and hence heavy load for 3G networks. It is very nice surprise of mobile Internet popularity despite of hard financial situation but MNO being the tube isn't a dream for "Great Three".
MNO and fixed operator could use single ISP infrastructure for Internet services and offer similiar services in web: web advertising, policy managing, acceleration.
Another significant issue is in integration of fixed operator VoIP infrastructure and MNOs mobility. I belive that soon we will see extremly new proposals on the basis of mobile IP telephony - WiMax competitors continue development and testing of such services - and MNOs will have to make answering proposals.
To sum up: it is good time to offer or at least begin activities for promotion of convergent solutions and new services (MTS continue to invest in new services, there are rumors that GT projects in Vimpelcom still have budgets). Main convergent solutions are:
- WEB advertising (MTS and Vimpelcom have such projects in development)
- WEB policy management
- Internet acceleration
- Mobile PBX
- IP telephony for mobiles
- Three screens solutions (IPTV, WEB TV, Mobile TV)
Thanks,
Denis.
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