New Business Development Strategy of Telecommunication Operators Based on a Smart Energy System

This research studies the case of KT to see how a mobile operator expanded beyond its existing offerings to new smart energy business based on digital technology. Details were analysed specifically on how the business was developed, why the smart energy service was started, and what the success factors were. KT's smart energy business (KT-MEG: KT Micro Energy Grid) utilizes ICT to resolve energy issues such as global climate change and energy consumption growth. It also provides growth opportunities for KT with its KT-MEG platform. The authors analyze that KT was able to leverage sustainability as a new growth engine by developing new businesses to differentiate customer experience, create effective organization structure, and generate business impact in addition to application of latest ICT technologies such as artificial intelligence, IoT (internet of things), and big data. The results provide a good guideline for business transformation of ICT firms in the era of Industry 4.0.

Sustainable Development Goals

Safaricom Limited is a telecommunications company, the largest mobile operator in Kenya, serving over 20 million customers and occupying two-thirds of the market share in the industry. The company strives to push the boundaries of conventional ways of doing business by focusing on value creation to the society, economy, and environment of Kenya by incorporating the top-down, bottom-up approach to integrate the SDGs into its corporate strategy and its corporate social responsibility projects. The mission of the company is transforming lives, and this is evident from its operations and investing resources in sustainable projects.

Prospects for the Use of Mobile Operator Data in Studies of Natural and Man-Made Risk

The article proposes a conceptual substantiation of the possibility of using the cellular operators data in order to assess the population vulnerability in the natural risk studies. Cellular operators data allow obtaining information on the differentiation of the population vulnerability in a large city (the article provides the case of Moscow) to natural and manmade hazards, taking into account the actual population size and its movement within different time cycles (daily, weekly, seasonal). A reliable information of how many people are at each point of the urban space at a certain point in time will allow not only to timely assess the most likely number of people in the potential danger area, thereby simplifying the work of specialized emergencies services, but also to competently develop a set of preventive measures in accordance with the real need.

Empirical Research on the Relationship between Consumer Attitudes and Values towards Advertisements by Mobile Operators

The purpose of this article is to present research on consumer attitudes to mobile operator advertising, as well as their relationship with components of the value of consumers of mobile products and services. The Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion, which examines the variability of attitudes toward advertising, as well as the Schwartz method for changing values, are applied. The obtained results clearly show the presence of a relationship between the studied indicators, as well as behavioral changes in the individual target groups. The leading summary is that females aged 21 to 24 are more strongly influenced by advertising of mobile operators and the same target group shows higher values for establishing benevolence towards different family members and universalism as shows tolerance to the needs of representatives of individual social groups.

FINTECH TOOLS IN THE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OF THE EAEU COUNTRIES

A study of the use of Fintech tools in the field of foreign economic activity of the EAEU countries was conducted. The article highlights the role of digitalization in the development of the market of goods, services and capital in integration associations. Based on the actual data, the analysis of the situation in the sectors of the financial market of the EAEU countries was carried out and the features consisting in a high degree of differentiation of the development and dynamics of various segments of the financial market were highlighted. The analysis of Fintech tools has shown that in the field of foreign economic activity and support of foreign trade contracts concluded within the framework of the EAEU, there is no single electronic system which allows to effectively support export-import operations and promote interaction and development of corporate entities and enterprises of all forms of ownership. The analysis of existing approaches to the use of electronic systems in the field of foreign trade has shown that most of them are based on mobile operator platforms, which limits the development of digital tools. The unavailability of digital technologies or their absence in a number of EAEU countries indicates the underdevelopment of the digital culture of citizens of the EAEU countries. The article suggests ways to solve the current situation by creating a unified electronic trading system and a unified marketplace with the possibility of opening remote access to a variety of financial instruments for individuals and to attract the capital of companies; increasing the quantitative and qualitative parameters of the development of the financial center; unifying the reporting and auditing system of issuing companies, as well as ensuring the availability and transparency of innovative regulatory and control systems.

Individual Abuse of Collective Dominance in Cellular Communications: Problems of Identification

Recently, discussions about the validity of the Russian practice of establishing the facts of individual abuse of collective dominance have been escalating: many experts point to a contradiction between the meaning of collective dominance, in which a small number of companies have a joint dominant position, in connection with each other, and the possibility of an individual company to abuse this position. The purpose of the article is to assess the correctness of this approach in the context of recent antitrust cases in the cellular communications market – in particular, two cases against the mobile operator “Tele2”. In the article, the applied practice is assessed in relation to the currently known results in the field of economic theory, as well as international best practices in the application of the concept of collective dominance. The findings indicate that the conclusion of the FAS Russia on the presence of the dominant position of Tele2 as part of collective dominance and the possibility of the company to exercise its market power does not correspond to either foreign practice or industrial organization theory. The source of error in the qualification of behavior is largely due to the focus of the antimonopoly authority on quantitative criteria of collective dominance to the detriment of the analysis of qualitative criteria and behavior. This case illustrates a typical tendency for such cases not to investigate the behavior of other collectively dominant market participants in relation to the behavior of the company accused of individual abuse, as well as not to investigate consumer behavior, and, in particular, their real possibilities to switch and switching actions. The article was written on the basis of the RANEPA state assignment research programme.