Azerbaijan, Baku, June 4 / Trend H. Valiyev /
Russian mobile operator MegaFon has acquired 100-percent-stake of Russian national operator Synterra, which holds 50 percent share of Azerbaijani-Russian venture C-Ring Telecom (Azertelekom and Synterra - 50 percent). The deal amounted to $745 million.
Today, C-Ring Telecom carries out the construction of cross-border fiber transition between Russia and Azerbaijan. It will connect the telecommunications infrastructure of the Russian-Azerbaijani border in the area of Derbent-Guba. An international line of communication with the initial capacity of 10 Gbps was created on the basis of transition.
Commenting on MegaFon's acquisition of 100 percent stake of Synterra, the group of Synterra companies spokesman Yekaterina Andreyeva said that the shareholders of MegaFon will present their strategy for the integration of Synterra and its subsidiaries in the business of MegaFon by late June.
"The new strategy of MegaFon will determine the future of Synterra's assets and its international backbone network," she said.
An acquisition of Synterra is mutually beneficial for both companies. It will strengthen the position of MegaFon on the markets of telecommunications, fixed and mobile broadband Internet access, converged services. "Synterra", in its turn, receives powerful human, financial, technological resources, OJSC "MegaFon" PR director Peter Lidov told Trend.
"Our goal is to become the leader on the broadband market (both mobile and fixed) by 2012. It not ruled out that there will be a different approach to conquer this market in different regions of Russia by buying regional companies, the construction of third generation networks, through other technologies. "MegaFon" is the leader on mobile Internet services market. Our 3G network now is ahead in terms of subscribers, traffic and the number of base stations. Using of Synterra's main channels will allow "MegaFon" to improve the quality of services in 3G networks and increase transmission speed data," Lidov said.
C-Ring Telecom will use resources and capabilities of Azertelecom's and Synterra's infrastructures in its projects on the territory of Azerbaijan and Russia. Azerbaijani business and the public will have a full access to a range of communication services offered by "Synterra", including services of international / long distance, rental of main channel services based on network IP MPLS, Internet access, network access data centers and distributed call-center.
The access to basic telecommunications services (voice, internet access) will be provided by Azertelecom, and the development of innovative services (data centers, call-center, GRID-technology, content services) -l C-Ring Telecom.