Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Russian 4G Launched on schedule

Russia’s largest mobile operators MTS, Megafon, Vympelkom and Rostelecom succeeded to meet the terms established by the Federal Supervision Agency for IT and Communications (Roscomnadzor):Vympelkom and MTS have launched 4G services in Moscow,Megafon – in Yekaterinburg, and Rostelecom in Sochi.

Under the terms of last year’s tender held by Roscomnadzor to allocate licenses for provision of LTE services in the 791‑862 MHz band (the winners were also granted the 2.5‑2.7 GHz band, and in the future they are also promised the 700 MHz band) MTS, Megafon, Vympelkom and Rostelecom had to launch services by June 1.2013

In the end of May 2013, Vympelkom announced the launch of LTE in Moscow. MTS and Megafon had launched its LTE networks in the capital of Russia a year ago, but neither company actually used the frequency obtained through the tender, and therefore couldn’t be rendered compliant to the licensing terms and conditions. In the beginning of June, MTS announced that they built another LTE subnetwork on the frequency obtained through the tender. In the end of May, Megafon deployed an LTE network in their
own frequency in Yekaterinburg. The network in Sochi was launched by Rostelecom on June 1. Depending on the lot, winners of the 4G tender are supposed to build LTE networks in 5‑8 regions by December 1, 2013. Apart from the Big four (MTS, Megafon, Vympelkom and Rostelecom), other operators
granted an LTE license include Scartel (Yota brand) and Osnova Telecom.

Scartel has launched LTE in more than 100 municipalities of 29 regions (this frequency is used for 4G by Yota and Megafon). Osnova Telecom hasn’t launched commercial networks yet.

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