MTS and its daughter MGTS have become the third leading provider of fixed-line pay-TV services in Moscow, pushing VimpelCom back into fourth place.
According to Vedomosti and TelecomDaily, MTS/MGTS ended the third quarter with 210,000 subscribers, or 8,000 more than VimpelCom, compared to 185,000 and 198,000 three months earlier. T
his turnaround is attributed to MGTS’ GPON fibre-optic network, which began to actively connect subscribers in the summer of 2013 but has only seen significant demand for fixed services such as pay-TV since this summer.
Although Rostelecom and Akado remain the leading providers of fixed-line pay-TV services in Moscow, with 3.24 million and 1.02 million subscribers as of the third quarter, MTS is becoming an increasingly important player in the Russian pay-TV market as a whole.
It recently launched its own DTH platform and took over the subscriber base of MTG-backed Raduga TV, which ceased operating earlier this month.
