RusTele.com

St.Petersburg cellular communications market 2009

More than 57% of cellular subscribers in St. Petersburg belong to the gentle sex; more than half of subscribers don’t remember what tariff plan they have and 1% of them don’t even know what mobile network operator’s services they use;

the most popular mobile phone vendor is Nokia; number of people who are cutting down their expenses on phone talks is reducing month by month.
These facts are among many others revealed in RusTele.com information analysis agency’s study of St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast’s cellular communications market in August 2009.

The research data was acquired by the telephone inquiry which has reached more than 2.600 residents of both regions in question. Yuri Bryukvin, RusTele.com CEO: “Initially the goal of this study was to establish some realistic data about the level of penetration of mobile communications services in St. Petersburg and Lenoblast and to find out the real alignment of forces in the market. It’s getting harder to put much stock in the cellular companies’ statistics. It says that the number of subscribers is two times bigger than the actual number of residents. Besides, it’s improper procedure to compare two different companies’ data – MTS names their subscribers even among those who hadn’t use its services for more than 6 months while other operators just write such customers off. So we decided to check on whether the operators are honest enough with what they’re saying about the subscriptions data they issue by themselves.

What we did was taking a solid selection of mobile phone users and bothering them a bit with our questions. Conjointly we managed to acquire some peculiar data on cellular communications market and we are eager to share this information with you. Thanks a lot to all the respondents who found the time to answer our questionnaire”.

According to RusTele.com study, the level of penetration of cellular communications services in St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast as of August 2009 is 87%. Market’s leader by the total number of subscribers is “Megafon” which is followed by MTS with the 5% gap. The third place is for “BeeLine” who beats Tele2 by a slight margin of 4%.

The most loyal subscribers use “Megafon” while the churners are plenty among the users of “BeeLine” and Tele2.

Gradually the residents of St. Petersburg and Leningrad oblast cut down their spending – in the beginning of July people who were doing so were 25,7% of respondents. In the September they were more than 43%. But this does not apply to the telecommunications services – on the contrary, the spending on these services is slowly growing month by month.

Which mobile network operator’s services do you use?

Are you ready to change your MNO?**

**breakdown by operators, % of overall number of subscribers

Research method – telephone inquiry using CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) system.

Respondents: St. Petersburg residents (82%), Leningrad oblast residents (18%).

Age , %
Younger than 18 years 11%
18-34 years 24%
35-44 years 35%
45-59 years 21%
More than 60 years 9%