The telecommunication market in Ukraine is now experiencing a period of stabilization and limited growth.

This is the opinion of the majority of the market operators participating in the research on buying activity in the B2B segment of telecommunication market of Ukraine

According to the information on 82 telecommunication operators working on the Ukrainian market, the majority of companies have gone through the stages of intense rise, defined their strategic priorities and worked out efficient development plans.

 The major strategic aims of telecommunication operators:

• broadening of subscribers (customers) base, expansion into new markets - about 68%
• expansion (modernization) of the existing networks - 65,6
• investments into capital construction and building new networks -  42 %  
• maintaining the existing positions on the market - 31%

For more detailed distribution of strategic aims of telecommunication operators see Fig. 1:

Profit increase is considered the priority aim by about 60% of respondents, while expense minimization – by nearly a half (around 31 %).

So, how are the operators going to increase profit?

65% of operators stated that the priority direction is introducing new telecommunication services.

The respondents consider Broadband Internet access the most promising and profitable (72,12%).

All the participants of the survey denote the IP-telephony services VoIP and IPTV services as quite promising (43,27% and 35,58% accordingly).

About one third of the polles also emphasized the potential of mobile access to Internet, Triple play and Quad play services.

27% of the pollees admitted the promotability of GSM mobile communications and only 18% admitted the promotability of 3G/4G mobile communications (it is notable that the number of choices in this matter is close to the number of choices in traditional telephony).

Recognizing the importance of introducing new services, the operators have shown quite a large conservatism concerning expenses and investments.

73% of the respondents answered that their expenses on maintaining and expanding the existing networks are larger or significantly larger than those on introducing totally new technologies and solutions.

13% more estimated this ratio as 50 to 50.

The number of respondents whose companies are ready to invest into new technologies and services more than into expanding and maintaining the existing networks is not more than 14%.

Among the factors stimulating investments into the development of innovative technologies the market experts named a drastic increase in consumers’ demand for some services (24,69%), seldom – others’positive experience showing an undoubtful advantage of introducing new technologies/equipment (13%).         

A very insignificant number of respondents among the stimuli to innovation marked strengthening of competitors’ positions (9,88%) or unplanned profit increase, investment inflow, and spare circulating assets (6,17%).     

And as a conclusion: the opinion of operators and experts of the extent of operator’s understanding WHAT exactly they need and HOW it is going to work.

There search results have shown that the operators themselves think that by the moment of purchase they know exactly what goods and with what technical characteristics they need (61% of operators told so).

And the experts claim that in their work they often face operators that realize the functions the commodity has to perform or the tasks it has to accomplish, but have no clear idea of technical characteristics and quality criteria it must have (67% of experts).

Are these data in disputable or do they require explanation/addition/refutation?

 We would like to invite all the involved participants of telecommunication market to discuss these and other issues at conferences and  round-table  discussions held within the Sixth international exhibition ЕЕВС Telecom&Broadcasting October  29 to 31, 2008.