Russian company bids to take over Armenian telecom firm

Russian company bids to take over Armenian telecom firm

Arminfo
3 Jun 06

Yerevan, 3 June: Russia’s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems
(MTS), one of the biggest companies in the CIS, is bidding to buy 90
per cent of the shares of the biggest Armenian GSM operator ArmenTel
from the Greek telecommunications group OTE, [the Russian news agency]
Oreanda reports.

OTE bought 90 per cent of ArmenTel shares in an international
competition at the end of 1997 and obtained a monopoly on
telecommunications services for 15 years.

According to ACM-Consulting, at the beginning of 2006 ArmenTel had
more than 321,000 customers, while Armenia’s second mobile operator –
VivaCell – had about 300,000.