St. Petersburg Cable Television Association (CTA) has filed a claim to St. Petersburg Office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service asking to acknowledge St. Petersburg Cable Television Company (CTC) the market leader. CTA points to CTC to be servicing more than 65% of the city subscribers. Furthermore, it is not so easy to give up the company’s service. If the Antimonopoly Service agrees to CTA’s claim, CTC might be forbidden to raise tariffs for its service independently.

CTC is the largest cable television carrier in St. Petersburg. According to the Analytical Agency Rustelecom, CTC occupies about 70% and 59% of the local cable television market by subscribers and revenue, respectively. The company was established in 2001 on the basis of a homonymous state unitary enterprise. The state enterprise received a 49% stake in the joint-stock company, a 51% stake went to Radiotechnologii, Ltd. The National Cable Networks Company acquired a 98% stake in the company after that. The officials attributed establishing a joint-stock company for the necessity to upgrade St. Petersburg cable property (most of the network was constructed late in the 1980-s) and community antenna park (founded in the 1960-70-s), which were under the unitary state enterprise CTC control. Due to servicing the given antenna park, CTC has been included into the receipt for utilities. The company has its own cable network. In 2007 there were about 455 thousand subscribers to the CTC optic network. There are about 730 thousand subscribers to the CTC community reception system.

News source: Cnews.ru
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