I suspect that it is the way with the rest of the world but it does not make it any more right; demand for reasonably priced voice and, particularly, data communications is growing rapidly. However, the market is being held back by the incumbents who are more interested in providing communications to high end corporate customers than tracking down the dispersed SME market, but still insist on making it difficult for others to enter the market. Note that in Moscow / Russia incumbent has a slightly different connotation to the rest of the world - incumbents may be CLEC's but if they have the right level of political support they very definitley display the same qualities of boneheaded denial of market opportunities that their bretheren in the rest of the world have.
Its not as though the basic infrastructure does not exist. In Moscow, which is not like the rest of Russia, the city level backbone exists; its the copper over the last mile (500m?) that is lacking. Thus a potentially lucrative market for broadband wireless serving SME's, consumer outlets and high end retail (believe me there is enough of it.) An example; the Sistema Telecom controlled MGTS (Moscow City Telecom Network - THE ILEC) recently raised carriage prices 9x for Golden Telecom, Moscow's leading business CLEC - economic rape - especially as MGTS would never be able to offer even the paltry service levels of Golden Telecom.
There is no shortage of mom & pops playing local games; not big enough to draw the attention of the big boys, but also not big enough to generate inetrest from the financial community. Strikes me that one of the easiest investment cases to make in Moscow today is aggregating all these mom & pop's to create a really viable ISP / WISP.
Whilst Russia may have one of the most theoretically liberal telecom markets in Europe, the reality is that the incumbents are determined to repeat the mistakes of the west, only without the debt.
04 March 2003
I suspect that it is the way with the rest of the world but it does not make it any more right; demand for reasonably priced voice and, particularly, data communications is growing rapidly. However, the market is being held back by the incumbents who are more interested in providing communications to high end corporate customers than tracking down the dispersed SME market, but still insist on making it difficult for others to enter the market. Note that in Moscow / Russia incumbent has a slightly different connotation to the rest of the world - incumbents may be CLEC's but if they have the right level of political support they very definitley display the same qualities of boneheaded denial of market opportunities that their bretheren in the rest of the world have.
Its not as though the basic infrastructure does not exist. In Moscow, which is not like the rest of Russia, the city level backbone exists; its the copper over the last mile (500m?) that is lacking. Thus a potentially lucrative market for broadband wireless serving SME's, consumer outlets and high end retail (believe me there is enough of it.) An example; the Sistema Telecom controlled MGTS (Moscow City Telecom Network - THE ILEC) recently raised carriage prices 9x for Golden Telecom, Moscow's leading business CLEC - economic rape - especially as MGTS would never be able to offer even the paltry service levels of Golden Telecom.
There is no shortage of mom & pops playing local games; not big enough to draw the attention of the big boys, but also not big enough to generate inetrest from the financial community. Strikes me that one of the easiest investment cases to make in Moscow today is aggregating all these mom & pop's to create a really viable ISP / WISP.
Whilst Russia may have one of the most theoretically liberal telecom markets in Europe, the reality is that the incumbents are determined to repeat the mistakes of the west, only without the debt.
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