OREANDA-NEWS. November 29, 2010. Rostelecom was awarded a license from the Federal Service for Supervision in the Field of Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Media for the provision of “Telecommunications services for the purpose of cable broadcasting” in 75 regions of the country for a term of five years.

In these regions, Rostelecom, on the basis of which Svyazinvest regional telecommunications operators (RTOs) and Dagsvyazinform will be merged to form a unified operator, intends to rapidly roll out pay TV, using both the existing resources of RTOs and newly created network infrastructure.

According to Vice President/Commercial Director of Rostelecom Pavel Zaitsev, “The strategic challenge of the merged company by 2015 is to command over half of the Russian pay TV broadcasting market.  To this end, Rostelecom is striving to use all its available technology and obtain all the required licenses.  The company is now working hard to aggregate interesting content which will be delivered to the households of our clients, both to computer displays, and television screens”.

At present, the companies of Svyazinevst holding have over 750,000 pay TV customers, including more than 200,000 IPTV subscribers, which is equal to 4% of Russia’s commercial TV market.

According to the Company’s estimates, the total pay TV market in Russia could increase from USD 990 mln in 2009 to USD 2.65 bln in 2015.  In addition, the traditional cable TV market will grow from USD 613 mln to USD 1.23 bln, and the satellite TV market from USD 347 mln to USD 1.1 bln, and IP TV from USD 30 mln to USD 324 mln, respectively.