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Technology Stocks : Vimpel Comm (VIP) ADR's of the Russian Cellular Phone Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Savant who wrote (110)	10/10/1998 1:06:00 PM
From: Alexander Pavlov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 283

<< Alex, I read that people are having a hard time buying food, and I saw (pre devaluation) a picture of a vendor changing the sign for melons from one ruble to two rubles...extremly cheap in comparison to north america,(as much as $8.00 for a melon) so it makes me think that $3.00 would be a large sum in Russia. The press being what it is, are the regular folk able to eat and pay heat and phone bills without problems? Best, Savant >> If $3 was a large sum in Russia, I would be extremely wealthy man :o) Savant, today I paid my bills and noticed, that $3 I posted yesterday is combined payment for 2 months (I prefer to pay on bimonthly basis, just to save time on visits to bank). Even more, my $1.5 monthly fee is higher than normal one, because my apartments are still registered as "multifamily" which implies higher rate of phone usage. To help you to get oriented, below are some local prices as of today: @ USD rate is 15.82 ruble petrol 1 (litre, local made cars) $.19 bread (regular size) $.16 beer (local brand, .5 litre) $.32 beer (Heiniken, .63 L) $3.16 coca cola (2l) $.63 cheese (local brand, 1kg) $2.21 meat (beef, 1kg) from $3 Thus being restated in raw beef, monthly phone fee paid to ROS would be .5 kg :o). Since there is no hunger, hope this answers your question whether regular folks could afford regular phone. The story gets different when it comes to cell phones. My household has 2 GSM1800 phones from VIP and combined monthly bill is about $100. Being restated in beef it produces more considerable figure. Taking into account the fact that a lot of middle class people either lost their jobs recently, or are on the verge of loosing we arrive to unpleasant for VIP picture. VIP's competitors already reported growth in a number of cancelled contracts. Last week I posted an advertisement in local WWW ads board claiming I buy GSM1800 phones in Moscow. The message was active for 3 days and I got a couple offers. Please note that GSM1800 is being selling only by VIP and just for something around 6 months... VIP is excellent as a company, I posted some reports on their marketing and bills collection on Yahoo board last summer. Look for user name rrabbt in there if interested. As a customer I can repeat that once more again. They also have some revenue from ISP Elvis+ and technical centre which sells car audio. They should have nice revenue from advertisers - VIP publish magazine which is free and is being delivered along with bills to each subscriber. Each bill accompanied also with a number of leaflets from different advertisers. The more I follow them, the greater my belief in VIP. Excellent company in extremely risky environment, I mean Russia. Hope this helps, Alex