Russia’s MTS ended the second quarter with a total of 6,705,000 fixed line (including pay-TV, broadband and telephony) customers, down from 7,294,000 a year earlier, in its home market.
However, the number of homes passed for such services rose over this period (12,390,000 to 12,545,000), as did ARPU (R330 – €4.54 to R369).
In its latest set of results, the company notes that the latter was due to a number of factors including the rising share of double and triple play customers and continued migration of pay-TV subscribers to MTS’s digital TV platform.
Meanwhile, MGTS’s GPON network in Moscow had 750,000 broadband and pay-TV subscribers in Q2, over twice the 350,000 posted a year earlier.
Construction of the network has enabled MTS to increase its revenue from broadband and pay-TV by 33.9% year-on-year and strengthen its presence in the Moscow market.
Separately, quoted by Tass, Andrei Dubovskov, president, CEO and chairman of the management board of MTS, has confirmed the company’s interest in Telekom Srbija.
However, he added that it will have to look at the details of whether the telco would be profitable and the amount it can spend on the company.
Telekom Srbija is currently in the process of being privatised and has attracted interested from a number of US investment funds, along with Deutsche Telekom, Telekom Slovenije and MTS.
