| are flexible on tariffs, and your main argument in getting cheaper tariffs is the amount of traffic you can offer," said Andrei Kozelko, the IT. manager at the Moscow head office of insurer American International Group, or AIG.
Still, the ability of businesses to play off the providers against each other is limited. The first limitation is the premises where a business rents office space. The massive office complexes that have sprung up in Moscow over the last few years are often assigned to one telecommunications service provider by the real estate developer before they are even built. So a customer who wanted to choose another provider would have to pay a hefty premium to cover the newcomer's costs for wiring into the building or for renting use of the incumbent's lines.
"The market really only exists at the initial stage of the real estate development, and a lot of it is to do with interpersonal relations," said Jason Smolek, a senior consultant at Moscow consultancy J'son & Partners.
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Some developers lay foundations for competitive telecoms service provisions at their office complexes.
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But if cozy relationships between real | estate developers and owners of the telecom ; providers weren't enough, special problems are encountered by businesses that have offices in various Moscow complexes served by different providers. A unified corporate network can only be offered by a single provider, which has to rent lines at those complexes where it is not the incumbent, passing on the extra costs to the customer.
"This is expensive and it would be good if the companies could get together and find a solution," said AIG's Kozelko, whose office is in the Gallery Aktyor complex on Pushkin Square, served exclusively by Combellga.
Some developers have taken care to lay foundations for competitive telecommunications service provisions when laying foundations of their office complexes by giving contracts to at least two providers. This is the case at Riverside Towers, in south central Moscow, where businesses have a choice between Equant and Sovintel.
"Most use Sovintel, but they have the choice, and it would be hard to have more than two operators," said Olga Yakunina, assistant to the Riverside Towers marketing director.
The ownership structure and branding of the alternative telecoms providers is complicated. Equant and Sovintel are genuine competitors, since they have no common shareholders. |
