The company “Kyivstar”, providing mobile communications services in Ukraine, is about to acquire the leading national telecom provider VOLIA. This is featured by the tabloid “MediaNanny”.
The VOLIA’s assets are of interest to the consortium “Alpha-Group”, Russian shareholder of “Kyivstar”.
The reports of “Kyivstar”’s intentions to buy the VOLIA Company have been circulated on the market for about two years. Now, this information is confirmed by at once several sources engaged in telecommunications. They believe the deal could be closed by the end of this year, although its price is not specified.
The companies’ activities are crossed in providing broadband services. According to open sources, the subscriber base of “Kyivstar” Internet services is 810 thousand. The VOLIA Company has a somewhat smaller number of subscribers, i.e. 600 thousand. In case of merger, the incorporated company may come close to the absolute leader in the number of Internet users, i.e. the company “Ukrtelecom” (1.6 million subscribers).
However, many telecommunications experts tend to believe that such a deal is quite risky, given actual political and economic situation. It may happen that this fact would attract the attention of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, which can block the merger.
VOLIA has recently acquired telecom networks of two providers in Melitopol, as well as the network of Vinnitsa telecom company “Pan Telecom”.
