More Than One Yota of Difference
Russian WiMAX service provider Yota succeeds by offering an innovative service—and exporting it abroad
• With 350,000 subscribers, Yota is one of the fastest growing WiMAX service providers—and one with a highly innovative business model.
• Yota continues to expand. In Russia, its network will cover 180 cities by 2012. It has just launched a network in Nicaragua, and next on its list are Belarus and Peru.
• At Yota, the focus is not on technology, but on the customers: making sure they have the devices, applications, and bandwidth they want, making it easier for them to sign up, and giving them a compelling service.
Yota is busy these days. The first Russian service provider to deploy a mobile WiMAX network, Yota has signed up over 350,000 customers in the six months since its commercial launch in June 2009 (Table 1). It continues to sign up 3,000 customers a day, and it is the first service provider to have launched a WiMAX/GSM smartphone. While expanding domestically, Yota has also soft-launched a WiMAX network in Managua, Nicaragua, and is planning for networks in Belarus and Peru.
Yota’s success is remarkable for a greenfield service provider new to the telecom market, deploying a new technology and a new type of service. The company has avoided the approach, common among emerging market operators, of focusing on basic fixed broadband connectivity in underserved areas. Instead it offers mobile broadband connectivity in cities where 3G is available, and where wireline broadband, including residential fiber in some areas, is available and cheap.
This paper explores what made Yota’s achievements possible and what lies at the core of its unique market approach. We look at the market in which it operates, at how it is building and expanding its network, and at the services, devices, content, and applications it offers its customers. Finally, we widen the scope to follow Yota’s activities in markets outside of Russia and to look at its future prospects.
Read the full More Than One Yota of Difference White Paper.
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More Than One Yota of Difference
Russian WiMAX service provider Yota succeeds by offering an innovative service—and exporting it abroad
• With 350,000 subscribers, Yota is one of the fastest growing WiMAX service providers—and one with a highly innovative business model.
• Yota continues to expand. In Russia, its network will cover 180 cities by 2012. It has just launched a network in Nicaragua, and next on its list are Belarus and Peru.
• At Yota, the focus is not on technology, but on the customers: making sure they have the devices, applications, and bandwidth they want, making it easier for them to sign up, and giving them a compelling service.
Yota is busy these days. The first Russian service provider to deploy a mobile WiMAX network, Yota has signed up over 350,000 customers in the six months since its commercial launch in June 2009 (Table 1). It continues to sign up 3,000 customers a day, and it is the first service provider to have launched a WiMAX/GSM smartphone. While expanding domestically, Yota has also soft-launched a WiMAX network in Managua, Nicaragua, and is planning for networks in Belarus and Peru.
Yota’s success is remarkable for a greenfield service provider new to the telecom market, deploying a new technology and a new type of service. The company has avoided the approach, common among emerging market operators, of focusing on basic fixed broadband connectivity in underserved areas. Instead it offers mobile broadband connectivity in cities where 3G is available, and where wireline broadband, including residential fiber in some areas, is available and cheap.
This paper explores what made Yota’s achievements possible and what lies at the core of its unique market approach. We look at the market in which it operates, at how it is building and expanding its network, and at the services, devices, content, and applications it offers its customers. Finally, we widen the scope to follow Yota’s activities in markets outside of Russia and to look at its future prospects.
Read the full More Than One Yota of Difference White Paper.
