BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

05/12/2008

Turkcell's Belarus unit aims for 1/3 market after '09

MINSK, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Belarussian mobile phone operator BeST, 80 percent owned by Turkey's Turkcell, aims to corner a third of the market after 2009, bringing it close to the top two operators, the company said on Wednesday.

Turkcell (TCELL.IS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) agreed to pay $500 million to buy the 80 percent stake and another $100 million in the first year that BeST shows a net profit and agreed to invest $500 million in the company's development over 10 years.

The largest operator in the country of 10 million is MTS, 49 percent owned by Russia's MTS (MBT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and 51 percent owned by the state. This operator has 4 million customers.

The second largest with 3.5 million customers is Velcom, controlled by Austria Telekom (TELA.VI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Turkcell's BeST has just 200,000 customers.

"We first aim to equally share the market with the two other operators and then win the market share, but I cannot give a time frame for this target," the company's general manager, Ozcan Ermis, said. (Reporting by Andrei Makhovsky; writing by Sabina Zawadzki and Ron Popeski)

Source:

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSL431753020081204

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