Russian telecom operator TTK has announced the completion of an across-the-board buyout of 18 regional subsidiaries previously owned by Russian Railways, the national rail operator and TTK’s sole shareholder.
To accomplish the task, TTK in December sold 1.069 billion rubles (about $36 million) worth of new shares to Russian Railways, which paid with its stakes in the 18 companies.
Transtelecom, the head company of the TTK group, is now moving on with its plans to create by late 2013 a new vertically integrated goliath, controlling branch offices all across Russia from the country’s most western enclave of Kaliningrad to Sakhalin Island in the Far East.
The idea of TTK consolidating Russian Railway’s telecom assets was first floated three years ago.
TTK operates Russia’s largest 75,000-km long FOCL with a bandwidth of 1.5TBps, and also runs an FTTH infrastructure covering an estimated 3.7 Russian households. In mid-February – before the buyout of the regional subsidiaries – the operator served 1.1 million subscribers in Russia.
