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October 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
with a number of competitors appearing for Yandex’s home-grown voice assistant Alice with monthly audience surpassing 30mn people.
Reportedly the new version is cheaper than previously announced (RUB4,000 versus RUB10,000) and provides more limited functionality (no video-related services), but retains basic functions such as music playback, weather, recipes and smart home control, as well as gesture control.
The speaker will be on sale as of October 31 at Svyaznoy retailer and Beru.ru (part of Yandex
and Sberbank e-commerce joint venture Yandex. Market), according to Vedomosti and Kommersant.
Albania’s telecom regulator awards 800 MHz frequency band license to Telekom Albania
The Albanian telecom regulator AKEP has granted a licence for the 800MHz frequency band to Telekom Albania, the company said. The chairman of the AKEP governing council Ilir Zela handed over the license to general director of Telekom Albania Emil Georgakiev on October 7.
This step paves the way for Telekom Albania to further improve its network and for capacity expansion, Telekom Albania said.
Subscribers will benefit from robust networking, higher Internet speeds, and 4G/4G + internet coverage in remote areas. It will also pave the way for 5G.
In January 2019, Greece’s OTE, which was part of Deutsche Telekom agreed to sell Telekom Albania for €50mn to Albania Telecom Invest, a company owned by Spass Roussev, owner of the Bulgarian Vivacom and Albanian businessman Elvin Guri.
Telekom Albania was known under the AMC brand until 2015. AMC was part of the Greek COSMOTE Group from 2000. It joined the Deutsche Telekom group in 2008.
At the end of 2018, Telekom Albania had 1.59mn subscribers down from 1.94mn a year earlier. Most of them were pre-paid mobile users, 1.47mn.
The company had a market share of 37.6% at the end of 2018 in terms of clients.
Russian retailer Ozon to provide credit services to its consumers
One of Russia's largest online retailers Ozon started to test in-house leasing models for its online sales, Vedomosti daily reported on October 4 citint the Vice President of the company Nikita Saygutin.
The new option will be available for up to six month with a 7% interest on the sales price. In the future Ozon eyes to expand the leasing platform providing it to re-sellers and fin-tech services.
Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti note that retailers traditionally cooperate with banks for leasing and credit due to challenges in collecting the payments and assessing the creditworthiness of the clients. Another challenge is managing the cash flow of delayed payments.
Ozon will establish its own credit scoring system based on the customers' purchase history and plans to turn to courts and third-party collectors in case of delays. The retailer counts to increase sales by up to 10% in certain categories as a result of the programme.
Russia's largest online retailer Wildberries told Vedomosti that it too studies the possibility of launching its own leasing programme.
Revenues of Mail.ru classifieds service Yula could jump 8-fold in three years
Classifieds service Yula of Mail.ru Group internet major could boost its revenues eight-fold in four years, Vedomosti daily reported on October 3 citing the analysts of Alfa Bank, after RUB1bn in 2018,