8% rise in GSM users in two months

According to Belarussian cellcos Mobile Digital Communications (which operates under the brand name Velcom) and Mobile TeleSystems LLC (MTS), the total number of GSM subscribers in the country stood at 2.54 million on 1 March 2005, a rise of 8.1% on the 2.35 million reported at the beginning of the year. Of the total, Velcom accounted for 1.22 million, up by 7.5% in two months, while MTS claimed 1.32 million customers, a rise of 8.7%. Velcom and MTS compete with a third cellco, Belcel, which operates a CDMA network in the NMT-450 spectrum band and claimed around 100,000 subscribers at the end of 2004.