Baltic, Baltic States – CIS, Innovations, Latvia, Lithuania, Technology, Telecomunications

 Nikita Sergienko, who was appointed as the group's CEO last July, notes that data consumption today is a key driver of revenue growth for mobile operators, enabling them to operate at a profit in a highly competitive, low-price environment.

"We think that 5G will eventually come and it will come sooner than we think today. For example, GSM (2G) as technology was launched in Lithuania in 1995. Only 10 years later, the 3G technology appeared, but good coverage came only in 2010. It took only 5 years to launch LTE (4G)," Sergienko, a Russian citizen who has been in the telecoms business for 15 years, said.

"Next generation technology will come probably in just three years from now. In 2019, we will see some 5G end-user devices. We don't know what these devices are going to be, but vendors are saying that one of the ideas is that 5G will not be used by smartphones or tablets, but by the Internet of things that will connect devices," he said.

In the CEO's words, the mobile communications market in the Baltic countries benefits greatly from competition.

Sergienko told that the group has no plans, at least for now, to expand into new markets, such as Estonia.

"We considered this option (of entering the Estonian market) a few times in the past with our previous owners. Honestly, it is a very small and fairly penetrated market, so today it is not in our pipeline of consideration. Other markets are fairly big in terms of scale compared with our mother market, Lithuania. Some other markets are not in the European zone and we think that it is beneficial to be in the European landscape. For example, Belarus or Russia. There is no point in mixing the European asset with some risky assets," he said.

The CEO said that there has been increasing competition among operators in meeting the growing demand for data and related services.

"Our current cycle is around consumer demand for data. People spend more and more time with devices that consume mobile data. There are more devices coming from the Internet of things. It is still in early stages, but I think in a few years from now, there will be more and more people that will consume more data," Sergienko said.

"A few years ago, the average customer used up to 200 MG per month. Now it is almost 2GB and by 2020, it will probably reach 10 GB. People consume more and this lets us breathe and survive this competition, lets us to continue investing heavily into our network capacity and technologies," he said.

Providence Equity Partners, a leading global asset management firm, last February took over Bite Finance International, the owner of the Bite Group, from Mid Europa Partners, a private equity investment firm.

Bite Finance International is the sole shareholder of Lithuania's Bite Lietuva and TeleTower and indirectly owns 100% of shares in Lithuania's Eurocom and Latvia's Bite Latvija and TeleTower.