The FINANCIAL — MagtiCom, the leading mobile operator in Georgia plans to open a new office at 2 Chavchavadze Ave., in front of the State University of Georgia, previous location of Geocell’s dealer office.
“The office was not Geocell’s property; the company just rented it. Magti had plans about that office long ago, even since cafe Excess was located there. So it is not as though we bought the office only because Geocell was renting it. We believe it’s a strategically beneficial location and Magti will take proper advantage of that opportunity,” Irakli Lob-janidze, Magticom’s Marketing Director, told The FINANCIAL.
According to Lobjanidze, unlike Geocell, which operates dealer offices, MagtiCom runs its own offices.
“I think both approaches are accaptable but from the very beginning Magti traditionally prefers running its own offices to dealing with dealers,” stated Lobjanidze.
Geocell has 40 dealer spots throughout Georgia, 8 out of them are located in Tbilisi, in-cluding the one on Chavcahvadze Ave.
On January 29 Stockholm-based TeliaSonera said it had increased its shareholding of Geocell to 97%. TeliaSonera – the biggest Nordic telecom operator – acquired extra shares when Fintur Holdings B.V., which is 74% owned by TeliaSonera, paid USD 33 million for 14.3% of Geocell. TeliaSonera became the owner of majority stakes in Geo-cell in 2003, according to the Georgian mobile operator.
Geocell, founded in 1996, is the first GSM operator in Georgia, operating on 900 MHz. At that time the company’s founders were Turkish and Georgian parties. The Georgian party was the holder of the controlling stock of the company.
After the merger of Geocell and Georgia’s third GSM operator GT Mobile, on March 27, 2001, Geocell became an authorized holder of GT Mobile (working on 1800 MHz fre-quency), followed by a very important fact – introduction of the pre-paid system, Lai-Lai.
From the year 2003, holder of the controlling stock has been Swedish-Finnish company TeliaSonera, one of the leaders in the world communication market. Accordingly, Geo-cell together with 4 GSM operators, functioning in Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Kazakhstan become a member of the leading group Fintur Holdings B.V.
In May 2006 Geocell became an owner of UMTS license (2100 mh frequency). In the near future a UMTS license will give subscribers the opportunity to become part of 3rd generation technologies, and use such services as high speed data transfer (up to 2mb), video calls, mobile TV and many other services.
Irakli Okruashvili, ex-Defence Minister of Georgia, who was recently released by French court on bail, was making speculations about Geocell. The ex-Minister along with Dimitri Kitoshvili, the president’s ex-spokesperson, confessed to forcing former law-maker, Jemal Svanidze, into giving up his shares in Geocell for USD 250,000. The market price of the shares, according to the General Prosecutor’s Office, was at least USD 10 million.
“I knew that Svanidze had shares in Geocell; as I wanted them I asked Kitoshvili to meet Svanidze and demand that he give them over, otherwise we warned Svanidze that he would have problems,” Okruashvili said. Although he later denied that statement.
Magti is the other large mobile operator in Georgia. Russia’s VimpelCom, which entered the Georgian market in March 2007, is the third player in the market. It operates under the Beeline brand name.
The MagtiCom network covers over 97% of the populated territory of Georgia.
MagtiCom commenced operating on 900 MHz frequency band. In November 1999 MagtiCom became the first GSM operator in Georgia to move to the dual-band system – GSM 900/1800 MHz, which was determined by the intention to improve service quality.
In 2005 MagtiCom started to build the first Third Generation network in Georgia to offer 3G services. As a result, in summer 2006, for the first time in Georgia, the company launched the new generation services along with a full range of GSM ones. Those 3G services were Magti Video Call, Magti Mobile TV and Magti High-speed Internet.
During recent years MagtiCom has been the biggest company operating in Georgia, both with respect to its contribution made to the economy of the country and the number of subscribers: MagtiCom is the first Georgian private company in the history of independ-ent Georgia that contributed more than GEL 580 million to the economy of the country within the 10 year period of its operation.
By means of its two brands Magti and Bali, MagtiCom now renders service to one third of the population of Georgia; the number of customers is constantly increasing.
Arab Dhabi Group is expected to join the local mobile communications market. Last week the group announced about making an investment in the Telecommunications mar-ket under the company name Warid Telecom Georgia Ltd. More than USD 80 million is expected to be invested in this sector until the end of 2008. A license for Wi Max fre-quency was purchased 3 months ago for more than USD 10 million. According to the plans of Dhabi Group Georgia, Warid Telecom, Georgia wireless internet and en-hanced telephony services will cover the whole territory of Georgia by the end of the current year, 2008. The company is not excluding the possibility of expanding to the mo-bile communications market.
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