Moscow Times
Mobile phone operator Megafon has decided to buy a high-speed Internet provider for $1.2 billion in a bid to cement its lead in the expanding wireless services segment.
Control in both companies belongs to Russia’s richest businessman, Alisher Usmanov, but the deal will put London-listed Megafon in a better position to plot the future course of their joint wireless operations.
Megafon, in which Usmanov’s Garsdale group holds slightly more than 50 percent, is to purchase Scartel, where the group owns 82 percent, according to a Megafon statement Thursday. The telecom companies have already been partners, which allowed Megafon to secure a lead in selling services based on the so-called Long Term Evolution, or LTE, technology, by using Scartel’s facilities — the country’s only existing LTE network.
“There is an understanding that they need to develop the network together,” said Konstantin Belov, a telecoms analyst at investment bank Uralsib. “It’s easier to do if the companies merge.”