Net income of Unitel, which renders services under Beeline brand in Uzbekistan, made up US$4.3 million in the second quarter of 2007.

Russian Vimpelcom, which fully owns Unitel, said net income grew by 19.4% year-on-year from US$3.6 million to US$4.3 million.

Active subscriber base grew 174.5% year-on-year to 1.19 million. Subscriber growth, coupled with an increase in ARPU, led to healthy 28.3% revenue growth in the second quarter of 2007 as compared to the first quarter of 2007. Net operating revenue comprised US$23.1 million in the second quarter.

The company said ARPU made up US$7.2 in the second quarter compared to US$12.7 in the same period of 2006.

ARPU is calculated by dividing the Company’s service revenue during the relevant period, including roaming revenue and interconnect revenue, but excluding revenue from connection fees, sales of handsets and accessories and other non-service revenue, by the average number of the Company’s active subscribers during the period and dividing by the number of months in that period.

MOU decreased from 349.3 minutes in the second quarter of 2006 to 265.6 minutes in the same period of 2007.

MOU is calculated by dividing the total number of minutes of usage for incoming and outgoing calls during the relevant period (excluding guest roamers) by the average number of active subscribers during the period and dividing by the number of months in that period.

OIBDA reached US$11.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 19.8%. OIBDA is defined as operating income before depreciation and amortization. The company believes that OIBDA provides useful information to investors because it is an indicator of the strength and performance of its business operations, including ability to finance capital expenditures, acquisitions and other investments and ability to incur and service debt. OIBDA margin was 49.1% in Uzbekistan. OIBDA margin is OIBDA expressed as a percentage of total net operating revenues.

In Uzbekistan mobile penetration is still only 15%, so our focus remains on growing subscriber base, the company said.

"Our strategy is to continue investing in the development of the market. Key priorities in Uzbekistan are subscriber growth, network build-out, opening of new offices and development of our sales and distribution network," it added.

The company noted that its market share in Uzbekistan rose from 25.8% in the second quarter of 2006 to 32.7% in the reporting period of 2007.