Armenia: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview
Overview
VivaCell and ArmenTel are owned by the two largest cellcos in Russia, MTS and VimpelCom respectively, although two years ago they had around the same number of subscribers, since then VivaCell has grown a great deal more and now has nearly three times the number of subscribers as ArmenTel and around 70 percent market share.
ArmenTel
ArmenTel’s network went live in 1996 and was owned by the Armenian Government until 1998 when 90 percent was sold to OTE of Greece and in 2006 was sold to VimpelCom. ArmenTel currently only offers services under the GSM 900/1800 spectrum but intends to launch a 3G network in early 2009 making use of the licence it was awarded in October of 2008 to operate in the 1929-1935MHz and 2110 - 2125MHz range of frequencies.
At the end of June 2008 ArmenTel were the second largest cellco in terms of subscribers with 634,500.
VivaCell
ArmenTel was monopolistic in the mobile market until VivaCell launched in July 2005, then owned by K Telecom. 80 percent of the company was sold to MTS, the largest operator in Russia and in the CIS, on the 17th of September 2007. Since launching in July 2005 VivaCell have gone from no subscribers to 70 percent of the market by subscribers, this is due primarily to ArmenTel having exceptionally high pricing, at times around 3 times higher than neighbouring countries Georgia and Azerbaijan. It currently has a licence to launch 3G services and will do so in early 2009.
Other Networks
Russian-based Comstar’s Armenian subsidiary Cornet-AM has built the first WiMAX network in Armenia based on the 802.16e standard and consisting of 24 base stations. The 3.6-3.8GHz frequency range was allocated 9 regions of the Republic of Armenia.