Russian Towers shaping telecoms landscape

By bne IntelliNews July 5, 2013

Ben Aris in Moscow -

Russian mobile phone operators just launched the first 4G networks and the biggest cities are due to be covered by the end of this year. The move to better technology has opened a new world of opportunity for Russian Towers, the country's first, and to date only, independent company leasing out mobile phone base stations to what are now the biggest operators in Europe.

Peter Owen Edmunds is one of the pioneers of Russian telecoms. After leaving the British Army's Welsh Guards he moved to St Petersburg where he was one of the founding partners in PeterStar, the first commercial fixed overlay network operator. PeterStar was set up in 1992 and blazed the trail for foreign investors into the new Russian market, and was eventually sold to Russian major mobile phone operator MegaFon in 2002.

Owen Edmunds set up Russian Towers in 2009 with his partner of many years, US entrepreneur Garth Self. Mobile phone companies need base stations to send out their signal, but once the competing networks all cover the same ground the rational for owning these towers changes: it makes more sense for rival firms to cut costs by sharing the towers than it does to add new networks where one already exists.

Putting up telecoms towers is capital-intensive with a long-term pay back - a difficult proposition in Russia. Before Russian Towers could go into operation the two men had to first get the mobile phone operators to agree to lease the towers, while at the same time securing the investment it would take to build them.

"It was all a bit crazy as the operators didn't want to sign off on the leasing contracts until the money was in place, but the investors weren't keen to promise the money until leasing agreements were in place," says Owen Edmunds. Eventually Swedish telecoms company Tele2 (recently bought by VTB) broke the ice and agreed to a deal for 55 towers.

Leading Russian fund UFG Asset Managers was the driving force behind raising the $40m in the first round of financing and helped persuade the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and some private individuals to commit to the project. Russian Towers has taken off since, and has since signed up the three dominant players - Megafon, Vimpelcom and MTS - in the Russian mobile phone market. A second round of fund raising in 2012 saw Macquarie, ADM Capital of Hong Kong and Japan's Sumitomo join the fray, while UFG and the EBRD put in another $100m.

"We are not reinventing the wheel here," points out Owen Edmunds; most developed markets have seen tower operators appear after the initial networks have been put in place. "People here are starting to understand that they don't need their own towers," he continues. "Today the mobile phone companies are no longer competing in terms of coverage as they were in the early days, but in terms of services and data. Russia is already as covered [by mobile phone networks] as it needs to be."

Leasing also makes the companies finances easier to organize, as the cost of building and maintaining towers is transformed from a capital expenditure item that needs to be financed to an operating cost that can be paid out of revenues, which is attractive for publicly listed companies. Russian Towers offers a deal that effectively finances the towers over 15 years so that instead of paying RUB6m ($194,000) to put up a tower, the customer can choose to lease a tower for RUB48,000 ($1,548) per month instead.

Still, it's early days. By the end of the year, Russian Towers will have some 800 towers up and running; the country's mobile operators currently own and run 24,000. At some point it will make sense for the company to buy them out of that infrastructure, Owen says, although he admits that just how far this process goes tends to vary from country to country.

"Towers used to be seen a strategic asset in Russia, and usually the operators were reluctant to give up control. It depends on where you are. However, at the moment all the operators are thinking about it," he claims.

That, he says, is because building and maintaining towers is a chore that doesn't sit well with them as they transform into pure service companies. It involves buying thousands of tiny plots of land in the countryside, or renting rooftop space with the owners of buildings in a city, both of which are tedious and laborious tasks in Russia.

One of Russian Towers' competitive advantages is a tie up with Russian Railways that gives it access to land right across the country. Mobile phone services along rail tracks are already in high demand, and that it set to increase, with Russia having begun to invest heavily in building high-speed rail links between a dozen major cities ahead of hosting the FIFA World Cup in 2018.

To date Russian Towers has concentrated on building out-of-town stand-alone towers as Russia's big three operators did most of the inner city roof-top deals in the first stage of development. However, Russia's first 4G licenses means even the inner city mobile networks will have to be completely rebuilt.

"The 4G technology needs new base stations that are much more densely packed in a city. But they don't need to be as high, so you can make use of things like street furniture, such as lampposts," says Owen Edmunds.

Under the terms of the licenses all three of the big operators, as well as fixed line operator Rostelecom, met the deadline to launch 4G networks by June 1. Both MTS and Vimpelcom, which operates under the Beeline brand, launched their first 4G networks in the centre of Moscow, while MegaFon launched its network in Yekaterinburg and Rostelecom in Sochi. Vimpelcom said at the end of May it would cover all districts in Moscow by the end of the year and will also launch 4G in 6 other Russian regions.

The remaining issue to be resolved is making more of the 800 MHz frequency, currently used by the military, to allow for full roll out of 4G in Russia. For Russian Towers, that's just another opportunity waiting.

Related Articles

Drum rolls in the great disappearing act of Russia's banks

Jason Corcoran in Moscow - Russian banks are disappearing at the fastest rate ever as the country's deepening recession makes it easier for the central bank to expose money laundering, dodgy lending ... more

Kremlin: No evidence in Olympic doping allegations against Russia

bne IntelliNews - The Kremlin supported by national sports authorities has brushed aside "groundless" allegations of a mass doping scam involving Russian athletes after the World Anti-Doping Agency ... more

PROFILE: Day of reckoning comes for eccentric owner of Russian bank Uralsib

Jason Corcoran in Moscow - Revelations and mysticism may have been the stock-in-trade of Nikolai Tsvetkov’s management style, but ultimately they didn’t help him to hold on to his ... more

Dismiss