Rostelecom grows pay TV base seven-fold

Russian telco Rostelecom said it had grown its pay TV base to 5.8 million at the end of September, up from only 900,000 a year earlier, thanks in part to its acquisition of NTK and other service providers. The operator recorded growth of 200,000 pay TV subscribers in the three months to September.

While pay TV subscribers grew seven times year-on-year, broadband customers grew by 27% to 7.9 million and mobile telephony customers grew by 8% to 12.7 million.

Pay TV accounted for RUB1.905 billion (€45 million) in third-quarter revenues for the operator, up 583% year-on-year, while broadband accounted for RUB11.429 billion, up 17%. Rostelecom posted revenues of RUB73.86 billion for the quarter, up 8%.

“We continue to grow our broadband and pay TV subscriber base. We have launched a large-scale rebranding campaign, centred on our successful transition to a single entity. The campaign addresses the need to have a single, unified Rostelecom brand by the end of 2012 to replace the dozens of brands that currently represent the company,” said Alexander Provotorov, president and CEO. “We continue to pursue selective acquisitions of local market leaders and we completed two more important transactions during the quarter, increasing our stakes to 100% in each of our two mobile operators in Russia. In addition to this, we recently signed an agreement with Yota to jointly develop and utilise fourth-generation wireless networks and we expect to launch 4G services as a MVNO in the near future. We are on track to achieving the ambitious targets outlined in our strategy by 2015.”