MTS go with NOKIA for LTE

Russia’s largest cellular operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and Nokia Siemens Networks entered into a contract for roll-out and maintenance of an LTE network in the Moscow region and Central Federal District. The three-year contract value is $200 million. “We made a three-year frame contract”, MTS vice president and CTO Andrey Ushatskiy announced to the press, “which means we can alter it according to our needs in terms of deadlines and maximum amount.”

Contract value includes equipment and software supply, network roll-out costs and comprehensive functional support. The contract applies to the Central Federal District, Moscow and the Moscow region; it envisages installation of about 2,100 FDD-LTE base stations. MTS launched an LTE network in Moscow in September 2012 having replaced old equipment from Motorola with NSN. Today, there are about  TDD-LTE base stations in Moscow, ComNews was told in the company.

MTS is implementing single RAN concept in the Central Federal District and the Moscow region. It implies roll-out of networks of various standards: 2G, 3G and LTE TDD using a single infrastructure

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.