OREANDA-NEWS  On 15 October was announced, that the Board of Directors at Sibirtelecom approved the company’s development program for 2009-2013. Primary provisions of the document reveal strategically important areas for Sibirtelecom’s development in the mid term. The operator plans to focus its efforts on changing approaches towards doing business and reaching the level of international standards in terms of primary financial, operating and marketing indicators.

“We have a clear understanding of specific features of the upcoming period that will be defined by aggressive expansion of wireless operations, liberalization of the telecommunications market and further toughening of competition. And we are confident that the company’s intensive and well-thought-out actions and non-standard solutions will result in stable development and impressive indicators of business efficiency” – Sibirtelecom’s board chairman Evgeny Chechelnitsky noted.

Main growth drivers for the company within said five years should be intensive expansion of the broadband Internet (BI) customer base, a 2.5-fold increase in lines per employee and improvements in ROIC to 15.7%. By 2013 Sibirtelecom plans to offer services to over 1,500,000 BI users. At the same time, VAS earnings should reach over Rub 20 bln. By implementing the development program the company will be able to ramp up revenue by 70% to Rub 46.8 bln. By the end of the 5-year period EBITDA margin will reach 37%. Execution of the targets will be driven by the completed construction of a multi-service network, the promotion of a number of additional services to the market and also intensive rollout of bundled products targeting various specialized customer groups. Fixed-line, wireless, Internet access and IP-TV services will be converged in various proportions in bundled solutions.

 “This development program marks a steady continuation of the company’s policy” – Sibirtelecom CEO Alexander Isaev pointed out adding that the current program to streamline sales and customer service activities, efforts to get an international quality management certificate, the launch of bundled offers have already laid the groundwork for the attainment of those goals that the operator highlighted in the program. “I can safely say that a third of the way has already been cleared” – he said.

Implementation of Sibirtelecom’s business development program will allow the operator to bolster its positions on the Siberian telecom market and give clients conspicuous advantages not only via a wide range of services provided within the developed network infrastructure, but also through unique services, bundled offers and the high quality of service.