According to a recent report of Datamonitor, the market of wireless voice and data communication in Russia rose by a steady four percent in 2012, climbing to USD21.5 billion. The forecast laid out in the analysis predicted that by 2017 the market value will grow by only 5.6 percent to USD22.7 billion. The number of subscribers in Russia in 2012 was 231.7 million, which is considerably more than the entire Russian population. Since the market is oversaturated, the number of subscribers by 2017 is not predicted to rise significantly, only to 242.6 million.

The monetary value of the Russian mobile market makes up for some 10 percent of the European wireless market. The biggest wireless carrier in Russia is MTS, which accounts for nearly 30.6 percent of the market’s volume.