Georgia’s third largest telecommunications company Beeline may leave the market. Head of Georgia’s communications market regulatory board Kakha Bekauri says that the Russian company has intentions to sell their business in Georgia.
Today Beeline accounts for 23% of Georgia’s mobile market, having almost 1.14 million subscribers. The largest players of this market are Magti and Silknet. both carriers are present on much wider specter of telecommunications sector - including Internet, internet television and etc. Magti has over 1.97 million subscribers and the number of Silknet users is over 1.77 million.
Beeline is the only company on this market which has financial loses. In 2017 company lost over 50 million Georgian Lari, while Magti had a profit of 99 million Gel and Silknet (then Geocell) had a profit of 26 million Lari.
In 2018 Beeline had a total revenue of 78 million Gel, which is twice as low as a total revenue of Silknet and almost three times lower than Magti.
Beeline is a subsidiary of Russian telecommunications conglomerate VEON (VimpelCom) which is publicly traded at Nasdaq.
Today Georgian Head office of Beeline has issued a statement noting that they had a successful year and they are looking forward to make investments and further develop their network. company has not denied that their Georgian operations can be sold noting that this kind of decisions are part of managing such kind of large business.
Head of regulatory agency, Kakha Bekauri is concerned over decrease in market competition he thinks that larger companies - Magti and Silknet can abuse their dominant power if competition is further reduced.
