MOSCOW—The U.S.-based MCT Corporation sold a considerable part of its Russian Indigo project, and market experts believe that may signal an end to the ambitious plan of creating a fourth nationwide network in the country.
The RTK-Leasing Company, in which the St. Petersburg-based Gamma Group investment bank has a 75-percent stake, said it bought from MCT a 95-percent interest in RTDC Holding, which possesses major stakes in nine Russian GSM, AMPS and NMT 450 MHz carriers, including operators such as St. Petersburg-based Delta Telecom (42.5 percent) and Moscow Cellular Communications (MCC) (22 percent). RTDC’s assets also include Nizhegorodskaya Cellular Communications, Dontelecom, Yeniseitelecom, Sayantelecom, Baikalvestcom, Uralvestcom and AKOS.
Gamma Group Executive Director Timur Khusainov headed RTDC’s board of directors.
MCT earlier said it wanted to unite all its carriers into a nationwide network, borrow US$850 million in investments on the world financial markets by 2005 and occupy at least 20 percent of the Russian market. Now it retains a dozen AMPS operators that it purchased from Golden Telecom two years ago and a couple of small GSM carriers.
“The whole Indigo project is now in doubt. It looks like Indigo is trying to negotiate a good deal to sell the remaining assets,” commented Anton Pogrebinsky from J’Son & Partners telecom consultancy in Moscow.
The cost of the deal was not disclosed, but Russian wireless market experts assessed RTDC assets at dozens of millions of U.S. dollars.
AMPS carriers in Russia are currently switching to GSM 1800 MHz technology, while Delta and MCC NMT 450 MHz carriers are licensed to build out commercial cdma2000 networks.
Market experts believe the NMT 450 MHz carriers may be resold to Accord-Tel Company, which announced plans of creating a nationwide cdma2000 network, while GSM carriers may be offered to major Russian operators, with the Megafon project a likely buyer. In addition, the leading Russian carrier Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) may also be interested as it is eyeing a bigger stake in Dontelecom in the southern Rostov region.
