Asia Telecom Ltd.(fka ATLJ)

[johncee]

Golden Telecom to Transfer Internet to Wi-Fi
Golden Telecom (GT) announced yesterday its arrival at the market of wideband access in Russia. In January, the company launches the Wi-Fi service in the downtown Moscow and nearby districts.
By late October, Golden Telecom will install 6,000 hot spots for Wi-Fi and cover Moscow within its Third Transport Ring, GT CEO Jean-Pierre Vandromme announced yesterday. The project budget has reached $10 million already.

The network testing is slated to begin November 15, so that Wi-Fi could be put into commercial operation January 15, 2007. With this service, Golden Telecom hopes to win 15 percent to 20 percent of the wideband market in Moscow in the following two years.

The capacity will enable GT to connect 300,000 to 400,000 subscribers by 2010 to 2011, Vanromme said, specifying they will be rendering services at the speed of 2 Mb/sec for the same money as Stream does. ARPU is estimated to reach $50.

The analysts are rather skeptical when evaluating this undertaking of Golden Telecom. Very soon, the market of wideband access will see competition tougher than the cellular operators have now. In this environment, Golden Telecom will hardly conquer a great share on the market, the analysts forecast.


http://www.kommersant.com/p714053/Wi-Fi_Moscow/