PRESS: Russian social network VK said to launch MVNO in 2016

MOSCOW, Oct 20 (PRIME) -- Russian social network VKontakte (VK), owned by Internet giant Mail.Ru Group, will launch its own mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), called VKmobile, on the network of cell operator MegaFon until the end of 2016, the Izvestiya daily reported on Thursday, quoting a source close to VK’s management.

The domain VKmobile.me was registered for the project, the source said. VK and MegaFon declined to comment.

Users of VKmobile will pay money or activities for services, under a model called freemium, when clients can do certain things, for example “like” an advertisement or join a group.

Yevgeny Gordeyev, founder of virtual operator Atlas, working under the freemium model, said that VKmobile could have a tariff where a subscriber gets 300 minutes, limitless access to all VK resources and limitless Internet at a speed of 2 megabit per second for 299 rubles. The network will focus on its young users, he said.

“If VKmobile has 2 million users in a year, we’ll say the project was a success,” Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn said. “If average revenue per user amounts to 300 rubles per month, it will bring the virtual operator 7.2 billion rubles per year in revenue.”

Georgy Vashchenko, director of operations on the Russian stock market at investment company Freedom Finance, said the project could earn 100 rubles per client a month with a possibility of growing by 50–100%.

According to LiveInternet, VK’s daily traffic counts 80 million people.

(62.5841 rubles – U.S. $1)

End