MTS subsidiary Uzdunrobita is the country’s market leader with 3.56m customers at the end of Q1 08. It was one of three operators to more than double its subscriber base in the 12 months to 31st March 2008. In fact, its growth rate was 44.0pp lower than the prior 12 months, but it was still an impressive 109.4%. Moreover, its figure of 760k net additions in Q1 was the best ever quarterly result by some margin; the previous record was Q4’s 507k. This helped it to gain 1.3pp of market share quarter on quarter to finish Q1 on 49.5%, although this was still below the Q1 07 figure of 51.4%.

Second-placed Unitel belongs to MTS™ Russian rival Vimpelcom, and thus uses Vimpelcom’s brand Beeline. It was the second fastest growing operator in the 12 months to 31st March 2008 with a 118.9% growth rate, although like Uzdunrobita this was substantially below the figure for the prior 12 months (195.8%). It finished the period with 2.42m customers, giving it a 33.7% market share â€" 1.0pp down on Q1 07.

Coscom was the only operator in the market to record an increase in its annual growth rate compared to Q1 07, improving by 62.3pp to 169.4%. It broke through the 1m mark in Q1 08 to finish the quarter on 1.005m, its market share improving by 2.7pp to 14.0% due to its market-leading growth. While the top three operators use GSM technology, Rubicon Wireless Communications and Uzbektelecom both use the CDMA standard. Neither has a significant market presence however, with 2.6% and 0.3% market share respectively.