Its third million subscribers of MegaFon-Moscow took over 7 months. High growth rates, especially for competitive Moscow market. General Director of MegaFon-Moscow Igor Parfenov claims that subscriber growth is broadly according to the company's plans, but it's not quite true. Six months ago, three million bar in the company's anticipated overcome only by the end of the year, respectively, planned investment in network development and construction of new base stations, etc. Increased number of subscribers not only proportional to the dictates "mechanical" building the network settings, but some changes in priorities and in the pricing policy of the operator. 
Network infrastructure: quality and quantity
While customers like to complain no matter what. However, a look at the numbers. In the first quarter, the company planned to build in the Moscow region in 1500 base stations by the end of 2005, roughly the same deadline was supposed to collect three million subscribers. Construction plans have been revised and "cherished" 1500 BC has now pledged to December, ie, shift schedule can be roughly estimated in a month. But the three million subscribers have already been recruited, and at the current rate of new connections to the beginning of December in the Moscow network will have 3.25 million users. So despite the rapid deployment of new RBCs, we see a lag in building up the network resources as compared with the previous company's business plan. Although this is not a reason to make any conclusions, network capacity and quality of radio coverage is not determined by summing the primitive number of base stations. Not to mention the fact that the parameters of the new BS may well be considerably better than those of conventionally laid in the old business plans.
On the other hand, the increasing number of users increases the likelihood of local congestion at certain times. Universal cure for the disease is not and is not expected, although obviously the problem space (eg stadiums) are trying to close a large number of stations. No one is building a network with a large margin with respect to capacity, it is unrealistic for reasons of profitability. And we are with you for some reason do not want to take this into consideration and strives to meet periodically in the crowd, but then also to look for in that crowd each other using mobile phones. Nothing can be done: more online customers - higher probability of local overloads in the "critical days" folk festivals and other events.
It is not cheap, but still profitable
According to Igor Parfenov, communication in MegaFon-Moscow can not be called cheap, rather - a cost-effective. MegaFon can afford to sell cheaper per minute due to lower cost of this very minute. A large share of the cost of the operator - royalties for capacity switches, billing, rental network software. Volume of these charges are directly proportional to the number of reported subscribers and depend little on whether, say these callers, 10 minutes a day, or make two calls a week. MegaFon saves time of payment, ruthlessly deletes inactive subscribers from the list of active and maintains an unusually high for Moscow GSM-market ARPU. In the absence of interest in the stock exchange share prices, the "number of subscribers is not essential and the principle of" take a lot of respect for a reasonable price "is still valid. MegaFon subscribers talk a lot and is relatively cheap, but the year already dutifully carry the cashier operator an average of 19-20 dollars per month.The smooth change of course full GSM-player is obvious. Derived from the use of "extreme" prices that are created in the period of fierce fighting for its place in the cool Moscow market. The required critical mass of subscribers have already been recruited, the plethora of "extra" network resources are not there and give a half-hour chunks of traffic from 6 rubles would be just silly. Enough to keep prices at acceptable levels and the selection of the competitors of those who are willing to pay a lot, but do not want to pay dearly. For the same reason canceled unlimited GPRS-access for a nominal fee: why sell wholesale goods, which is readily dismantled at retail prices? Although with unlimited GPRS is not so simple, in an atmosphere of active implementation of EDGE MegaFon would be forced to sharply limit the speed of data transmission over the "bezlimitchikam and spoil its reputation is certainly poor service.
An elephant in a china shop in Moscow tariffs
Reputation troublemakers firmly entrenched behind the Third Moscow GSM-operator. Let us recall some landmark initiatives MegaFon.Rate O'Layt with phenomenally cheap calls to mobiles, FIX, with its half-hour conversation at the price of a minute relation of competitors, the tariffs "Welcome" with all the free incoming, first ruble rate on the Moscow market, the fight against "dead souls" in the form of a short 30 days inactive life of the contract, shareware cabal called the "UltraLight" ... Finally, a unique and somewhat sneeringly "card renewal": you do not want to carry to the cashier 250 rubles a month - to pay 100 rubles. obyazalovke and clearly see the difference between cheap talk and costly to keep quiet. Yes, the other is no more, and those far away. " But the last line of tariffs to their every second of free minutes is not an exception and put to a standstill even MegaFon subscriber service, which for two days gave conflicting answers on how to write-off included in a tariff 300 minutes of outgoing calls. Although there is a suspicion that this mega-marketers after the introduction of new tariffs could not determine the choice of option write-offs: at one script subscribers received an unexpected gift in the form of approximately 100 extra minutes at the other - exactly the opposite, about the same number of minutes lost at the two-minute rounding. As a result materialized sad for us the second option, which saddened many already had time to connect to the new 2XL. Something which, well bored with MegaFon did not happen.