Bakcell increases market share by 1,5 percent

Bakcell has grown its overall market share by some 1.5 percent since Q1 2012 (this index hit 36.5 percent as of early 2012), Bakcell chief executive director Richard Shearer told media. "The market continues to be buoyant, with new products and services being launched by the two largest operators to stimulate the market," he said.

"While subscriber penetration is high in Azerbaijan, probably in excess of 100%, the market is continuing to grow. Data is now becoming a significant revenue stream for operators and the number of dongles in the market is growing rapidly."

"Bakcell's existing HSPA network offers customers very fast download speeds," he said.

"We are continuing to look at LTE, however, the availability and pricing of customer equipment means that the service is not generally accessible to mainstream customers. Once device prices fall, as more networks are rolled out globally, then Bakcell believes this is the right time to launch as the service will be more affordable for customers." "

Mobile broadband, whether that is our current fast HSPA+ or LTE will be the main access technology for customers who want to access and use the internet," he said.

"Fixed has a role to play in providing high bandwidth to build networks and provide backhaul but as a customer technology it has increasingly limited applications and increasingly limited attraction to customers."

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