Rostelecom

OJSC Rostelecom

Rostelecom's main building in Moscow, photographed in 2012
Company type	Public (OAO), state owned
Traded as	MCX: RTKM
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	23 September 1993 (1993-09-23)
Headquarters	Moscow, Russia
Key people	Sergey Kalugin (President) Sergei Ivanov (Chairman of the Board of Directors)
Products	Fixed Telephony Mobile Telephony Broadband Internet IT Services Networking Solutions Cable television
Revenue	$7.88 billion (2021)
Operating income	$1 billion (2021)
Net income	$432 million (2021)
Total assets	$15 billion (2021)
Total equity	$3.09 billion (2021)
Number of employees	126,000
Subsidiaries	National Cable Networks, Central Telegraph, Giprosvyaz, Onlime, T2-Mobile, Sputnik.ru
Website	rostelecom.ru

Rostelecom (Russian: ПАО «Ростелеком») is Russia's leading long-distance telephony provider. Domestic long-distance service provides about 50% of the company's revenue; and international long-distance calls provide about 25%.

Rostelecom interconnects all local public operators’ networks into a single national network for long-distance service. In other words, if one makes a long-distance call or originates Internet contact to or from Russia, it is likely that Rostelecom is providing part of the service. The company's stock trades primarily on the Moscow Exchange.

History

Prior to 1990, responsibility for the provision of telecommunications services lie at the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. On June 26, 1990, the Ministry of Communications of the USSR established a state-owned joint-stock company Sovtelekom, which was given the rights to operate the telecommunications network of the USSR. On December 30, 1992, by order of the State Property Committee of Russia, a state-owned enterprise Rostelecom, which consisted of 20 state long-distance and international calls, as well as communication equipment Intertelekom was organized.

Throughout the '90s, the company which was part of Svyazinvest, was the sole long-distance operator in Russia. Alongside it, local companies operated in the different regions of Russia under the umbrella of Svyazinvest while Rostelecom connected between their networks. In 2001, these companies were merged to form a number of regional incumbent telecommunications operators: CentreTelecom, SibirTelecom, Dalsvyaz, Uralsvyazinform, VolgaTelecom, North-West Telecom, Southern Telecommunications Company and Dagsvyazinform. On 2011, Svyazinvest was liquidated with the regional subsidiaries merged into Rostelecom.

On October 18, 2006 "Rostelecom" received a certificate of quality of IP-MPLS network and became the ISP backbone. In December 2006, Rostelecom and the telecommunications company KDDI in Japan under the "Transit Europe - Asia" signed an agreement to build a line of Nakhodka - Naoetsu with total bandwidth of 640 Gbit/s instead of the previous 560 Mbit/s.

Ownership

Owners of Rostelecom as of September 2018:

• Federal Agency for State Property Management (45.04%)
• OAO MobiTel (12.01%)
• Vnesheconombank (3.96%)

Operations

Rostelecom has the largest domestic backbone network (approximately 500 thousand km) and last mile connections to approximately 35 million households in Russia. The Company holds licences to provide a wide range of telecommunications services (telephony, data, TV and value-added solutions) to residential, corporate and governmental subscribers and third party operators across all regions of the Russian Federation. The company offers "Karta Svyazi" a user-friendly prepaid long-distance telephone card service designed to provide telephony and access to the internet for people on the go.

Land network

The company's network is based on extant Russian fiber-optic cable lines - FOCL. By cable the network is connected to countries in Europe and East Asia.

Fiber-optic cable lines crosses Russian Federation on directions «Moscow — Novorossiysk», «Moscow — Khabarovsk» and «Moscow — Saint Petersburg».

IP transit has been allocated to a separate company, RTComm, using Rostelecom's STM-16 FOCL resources, but Rostelecom is building its own STM-64 (9,9533 Gbit/s) network, which as of August 2006, covered Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Stavropol, and planned to cover the whole of Russia by the end of 2006.

Rostelecom had 29.2 million local fixed-line voice subscribers, 12.4 million mobile voice subscribers, 7.4 million fixed-line broadband subscribers and 5.5 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2010.

Satellite network

Using the services of the Russian Orbital Group, Rostelecom has built its satellite system for its Eastern region, comprising 11 land stations in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Satellite service for the Western region is being built at this time.

Cellular network

Throughout the 90s Rostelecom created subsidiaries that operated cellular networks in different regions of the country, including NSS, Baikalvestkom, Yeniseikom, SkyLink, Volgograd GSM and Akos which provided mobile services on the territory of 59 regions of Russia, serving more than 13.5 million subscribers. During the 2010s, Rostelecom and its subsidiaries built mobile networks of the third generation in 27 regions of Russia. Total planned to install more than 8 thousand base stations. Suppliers of equipment and solutions for the 3G+ network are Ericsson and Huawei. In April 2013 the company announced the launch of 3G+ networks in the Sverdlovsk, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk regions, in the south of the Tyumen Oblast and in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area. This launch followed the introduction of 3G+ services in Perm Krai. Rostelecom's 3G+ network was installed using HSPA+ technology, providing data transfer speeds of up to 21MB/s, with the possibility of upgrading the network to reach speeds of up to 42MB/s if demand requires. The 3G+ network is LTE-ready, so that only minor modifications will be required before the company can roll out its 4G (LTE) network in the future. In June 2013 Rostelecom launched its first part of its LTE network in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Besides, the company launched LTE networks in 8 other regions besides Karsnodar Krai by the end of 2013, including Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Republic of Khakassia, Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Sakhalin Oblast, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

In December 2013, Rostelecom board approved a plan to merge its mobile business into Tele2 Russia, former division of Nordic telecoms group Tele2 which sold it in April 2013 to VTB Bank due to the lack of 3G and 4G data licences, limiting its future growth prospects. Rostelecom would get a 45% voting stake in the new company, T2 RTK Holding, in exchange for contributing its standalone mobile subsidiaries and assets, including SkyLink. Tele2 Russia, owned by state-controlled bank VTB and Russian businessmen Yuri Kovalchuk and Alexei Mordashov, will have 55%. Rostelecom and Tele2 Russia together have around 38 million mobile subscribers, or a combined market share of 16%. During the second stage, Rostelecom spun-off its integrated mobile businesses into its new wholly owned subsidiary, RT-Mobile (Russian: РТ-Мобайл), which will be expected to have Rostelecom's mobile licences, including the LTE licences, re-issued to it. Analysts said the deal makes sense as "Rostelecom has been less efficient in rolling out mobile networks. By relying on the Tele2 team in mobile expansion Rostelecom removes risks, while remaining open to an upside". In February 2014 Rostelecom and Tele2 signed a framework agreement on the integration of mobile assets to the authorized capital of the joint venture "T2 Rus Holding". At the first stage of integration, Rostelecom passed seven cellular subsidiaries it owns: "Sky Link", "Nizhny Novgorod Cellular Communications", "Baikalwestcom", " Volgograd GSM" Yenisei Telecom" and ICCO.

Controversy

In April 2017, Rostelecom (AS12389) originated 50 prefixes for numerous other autonomous systems (AS). This caused Internet traffic normally destined for these organizations to instead be routed to Rostelecom. The hijacked prefixes belonged to financial institutions (most notably MasterCard and Visa), other telecom companies, and a variety of other organizations. What makes the list of affected networks 'curious' is the high number of financial institutions such as: MasterCard, Visa, Fortis, Alfa-Bank, and more. The other notable characteristic of this event is that the advertisement included several more prefixes that were more specifically defined than the prefixes normally announced, which makes it less likely that these were unintentionally leaked.

External links

• Rostelecom - Russian language and English language, corporate website
• Rostelecom - consumer website

Media related to Rostelecom at Wikimedia Commons