In mid-November I was fortunate to be able to speak about the U.S. wireless data market at the Mobile VAS Conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The conference was sponsored by the Russian consulting and publications firm of ADMIN Ltd.
The first (and last) time I was in Russia, more than 20 years ago, it was the Soviet Union. No cellular or any consumer wireless phones and rust-colored water my Saint Petersburg hotel.
It was much safer for tourists (Soviet police were generally more protective of tourists that today’s kidnappers!), but it was also tough to find good food and anything resembling well-stocked grocery stores.
Today, there not only are a profusion of excellent restaurants but also grocery stores that stock Russian and non-Russian groceries – that anyone can purchase. Previously, only tourists with “hard” currency would be allowed into special stores for foreign food and other items.
Russian cellular market;
I had thought the Russian cellular market was just a little bit behind the U.S. I think I was right, although there are plenty of camera phones to purchase and videos are just beginning to generate interest.
I learned a number of things about Russian cellular and here are a few tidbits…
* The main prestige shopping area in Saint Petersburg is the Nevsky Prospect where there are large billboards with advertisements for cellular phones.
* There’s WiFi in Saint Petersburg, although not much of it for tourists. My hotel (that I highly recommend), the Corinthia Nevskij Palace, offers WiFi (but no landline broadband) in the rooms. It’s not cheap: six euros ($7.20) for one hour and 24 euros ($29) for a day, but when you gotta have it…
The Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Saint Petersburg, a few minutes walk from the Corinthia, has free WiFi for guests. I sat in the lobby and tried to use it for free but you needed a password, alas.
I was told by a conference attendee who lives in Moscow that there’s much more free WiFi, at such locations as coffee shops, in Moscow.
* The cellular industry is getting ready to introduce Research in Motion BlackBerrys. The advertising agency of Foote Cone & Belding (FCB) is researching BlackBerry usage in preparation for an advertising campaign. I’ve been using BlackBerrys since before they used that name and answered a few questions from an FCB employee at the conference who works in Moscow.
My T-Mobile postpaid GSM GPRS BlackBerry didn’t work in Saint Petersburg, although it worked fine — for voice and e-mail — in Frankfurt, where I changed planes. As a test in Russia, I removed the SIM card from the BlackBerry and inserted it into another phone I was carrying, an unlocked Nokia 6600, and it worked in that handset.
I was told my BlackBerry didn’t work because Russian cellular operators didn’t yet support it. But shouldn’t the voice capabilities have worked?
* There have been a lot of complaints about WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) implementation in Russia. Apparently, many subscribers have problems downloading content and paying for content they never receive.
Also, many phones aren’t configured for WAP, especially because cellular shopkeepers aren’t paid for the extra time required for configuration.
* One consultant who presented at the conference said the ARPU in Russia was $11.90, but I haven’t confirmed that.
* The Russian cellular industry looks at Europe and Asia more than the U.S., I was told. The U.S. — with dual protocols of GSM and CDMA and its emphasis on flat rate pricing for unlimited data usage for cellular and WiFi — isn’t considered as much of a business model for the Russians.
Russia looks towards Asia for inspiration about future products and toward Europe for more current products.
For more information
ADMIN is offering a free e-mail newsletter with wireless news briefs about Russia. The company also sells research reports about the Russian VAS market.
It was a very interesting a useful conference for me. Saint Petersburg has always been an exciting, sophisticated and beautiful city with one of the world’s greatest art galleries (that I made sure to see while I was there).
I love traveling. If I had my druthers (and the income to carry out my druthers!), my main “house” — or, at least, my heavily-used second home — would be a Boeing 747.
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