Digital ministry expects new regs to have single operator by 2024

DUSHANBE, Mar 2 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Digital Development Ministry hopes a single mobile connection operator in the country’s new regions will be created in 2023, Minister Maksut Shadayev told reporters on Thursday.

“The options of consolidation of these assets are being considered…We hope it will be done this year. There are two operators, one in the Donetsk People’s Republic…fully state-owned, and the second in Lugansk… controlled by held by the Lugansk state operator,” Shadayev said.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said in mid-February that the government ordered the ministry to create a single mobile connection operator to cover the territories of the four new regions, where the tariffs are already the same as in the rest of the country.

The ministry said at the end of 2022 that the currently working operators will continue to function in the new territories -- MirTelecom and K-Telecom in the Zaporozhskaya and Khersonskaya regions; Mobile Communications Systems in the republic of Lugansk; and Republican Connection Operator in the republic of Donetsk.

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