How it started
History
The history of the company began in the 1990s when the American-Swedish Millicom International Cellular established mobile network operators which provided D-AMPS services in various regions of Russia. In 2001 Millicom sold its Russian assets to the Swedish holding Tele2, which started implementing GSM services in its networks and moved them to their own brand.
Tele2 started operations in Russia in 2003. Within the first two years of operation in the Russian market (2003–2004) Tele2 started providing services in 12 regions. In 2011 the number of Tele2 users exceeded 20 million.
On March 27, 2013, it was announced that the Swedish group Tele2 decided to sell its Russian subsidiary Tele2 Russia to the VTB Group. On April 4 the deal was completed.
On October 17, 2013, the VTB Group closed the selling of 50% of Tele2 Russia shares to a consortium of private investors holding the Rossiya Bank, including Yury Kovalchuk (the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Rossiya Bank) and Alexei Mordashov (the Severstal co-owner), and also 5% of the shares were sold to Sogaz insurance group.
On February 6, 2014, Rostelecom and Tele2 Russia signed a framed agreement on integration of mobile assets into the ownership capital of the joint venture (JV) T2 Rus Holding. This deal resulting in creation of a new federal high roller on the cellular market was completed within a year. According to the terms of the agreement, Rostelecom transferred its assets to the JV and became one of the stakeholders of the merged company. The joint venture was created on the basis of T2 Rus Holding (later renamed into T2 RTK Holding), which owns all the operating companies of Tele2 Russia.