Russia BREWS up another storm

by: admin Friday, December 1st, 2006

Rating: bitter taste for 3GSM?

Russia continues to swim against the European tide. Usually it’s politics and industrial policy that earns international disapproval. Now it has become the second European operator to embrace Qualcomm’s application development platform, BREW.

True, O2 and TIM have dabbled with bits of BREW, but they have not adopted it wholesale. Enter Russia’s Sky Link without any of that not-invented-here baggage. From today, Russia’s biggest CDMA(450) network operator is offering BREW-based data services and access to all kinds of mobile content. Its territory includes 65 regions with a population of 104 million people, which makes up 72% of the Russian Federation population.

This is a big deal for Qualcomm certainly. Whether it will influence 3GSM operators’ attitude towards BREW largely depends on how successful Sky Link is and how quickly. It could be bitter, but effective, medicine.

For more information see http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2006/061201_leading_russian_operator.html

more information on BREW and uiOne is available in this months The Mobile Search Analyst.

2 Responses to “Russia BREWS up another storm”

Vadim Tarasov Said:

Come on, SkyLink may be the Russia’s biggest CDMA operator, but compared to the rest of the Mobile Operators ( MTS, Beeline ) its market share is exactly NUTHIN’…aka ZERO.

Yeah, they have a _License for operation_ covering 65 regions and 104M people. But this is not the issue. The issue is that they won’t get close to 5% of this unless a miracle happens. It’s current client base is 360K people, mosto of which are concentrated around Moscow.

Comment made on December 4th, 2006 at 4:08 pm

bena roberts Said:

Wow thanks for the insight Vadim. I don’t believe in miracles - even around Christmas time… and I hear your message loud and clear! bena

Comment made on December 4th, 2006 at 4:43 pm