Quantitative Analysis of the State of Competition in the Market of Telecommunication Services of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of quantitative analysis of the state of competition in the telecommunications services market, the results of which may be of significant interest for antimonopoly regulation, where the task is to determine the degree of development of competition, to identify the facts of the use of anti-competitive strategies by subjects, or other forms of competition restriction. It is promising to use the results of quantitative analysis of competition to study the trajectories of competitive behavior of individual telecommunications companies. The purpose of this article is to conduct a quantitative analysis of the state of competition in the telecommunications services market and identify the features of competitive behavior of companies operating in it. To achieve the goal, the paper proposes a system of indicators for quantitative analysis of competition, which is based on the Russian “Procedure for analyzing the state of competition in the commodity market”, and also takes into account industry-specific features of competition in the field of telecommunications services. Based on the proposed system of indicators, a quantitative assessment of the state of competition in the interregional cellular communications market of the Russian Federation was carried out. It has been established that this segment of the telecommunications market is developing as a rigid oligopoly, the boundaries of which are determined by the market shares of large cellular operators. The competitive environment is formed by significant regional companies, as well as virtual mobile operators, whose influence has increased significantly in recent years. The factor hindering the development of competition in the market is a high concentration, which, along with the presence of significant economic and administrative barriers to entry, makes the market relatively stable and determines the positional nature of competition. The study revealed a trend towards a decrease in the level of concentration and a gradual saturation of the cellular communications market, which in the future may lead to an increase in competitive tension.