Russia’s fixed broadband market is effectively saturated, having grown by only 2% in 2015 to 30.3 million users.
As a result, report TelecomDaily and AKTR, quoting research by J’son & Partners, it will now be unable to grow by more than 1-2% a year, with operators only expanding through the acquisition of small regional players.
Indeed, leading operators are already experiencing bigger growth than the market as a whole – 2.5% in 2015 – with the top five gaining 490,000 customers. Rostelecom was the most successful (+284,000), thanks largely to the construction of optical networks, followed by ER Telecom and MTS, with the latter swapping places with VimpelCom.
Meanwhile, Akado Telecom believes the slowdown is in part due to the worsening economic situation in Russia and TTK expects the current trend to continue.
