Mobile penetration in Russia is 70% — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Total Voice Mail improve ARPU} Mobile penetration in Russia is 70%

Kirill Vronsky

16 Sep 2007 at 08:59 GMT Timo Poropudas

A realistic estimate of mobile penetration is Russia is around 70 percent, said Kirill Vronsky of Telecom Design at MobileMonday Global Summit in Petersburg on September 12th.

The mobile penetration level of Russia is usually said to top one hundred percent. This is figure is arrived by adding up the SIM-volumes reported by Russian operators. It does not take in account that many people have several SIM-cards and that operators do not remove inactive prepaid-customers from they subscriber books very rapidly. Almost all of the subscribers in Russia use prepaid SIM cards.

Stockholm and St. Petersburg educated Vronsky is the director of strategic development of Telecom Design that offers value added services delivery by developing and implementing innovative communication products and solutions. Its key telco customers are Megafon, companies of “SviazInvest”, Rostelecom (MMT), Vimpelcom (Beeline) and UralSviazInform.

Vronsky talked about VAS Implementation in Russia.

Voice and messaging are the bulk of mobile revenues. They are user-generated, familiar and convenient.

In 2007 value added services revenues account for about 15 percent, but no real growth is foreseen in SMS-based services and demand for mobile TV is limited at the moment. Vronsky also said that market is almost saturated with basic personalization services and growth can be found only in voice, WAP and GPRS-Internet. He sees no “killer app” in sight.

Vronsky made a business case for “Total Voice Mail”. This is a call completion solution, combining naturally complement services: voice mail, “who called me?” and notifications that would be provided for free to all subscribers.

TVM has evident revenue sources - recording\playback of voice messages and calling back. He estimates that it allows for 10 percent ARPU increase when its penetration level is 60-70 percent. Up to 15 of the subscribers with this service would be active users. This is three times more than regular 5 percent with other services.