Russia Joint Venture with Beeline, Rostelecom and Megafon to focus on 5G spectrum
Russian network operators Beeline, Rostelecom and Megafon have agreed they will own own equal stakes in their joint venture New Digital Technologies. The joint venture will focus on the release of spectrum for 5G services, including 694-790 MHz, 3.4-3.8 GHz, 4.4-4.99 GHz and 24.25-29.5 GHz bands.
The agreement was signed under the framework of the St Petersburg International Economy Forum. See hyperlink to 5G Russia video below.
Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) had given ‘preliminary consent’ to this agreement as reported on May 12th. In a disclosure on its website, the FAS said:
The agreement on joint activities, if implemented, stipulates equal access to radio frequencies for all participants in the mobile wireless communication.
In particular, the mobile network operators involved in the transaction will develop and agree with the antimonopoly authority on the conditions for the use of the infrastructure and/or the joint use of radio frequencies and the conditions for the provision of infrastructure for mobile virtual network operators*.
Taking into account the guarantees provided for the access of mobile network operators to the released radio frequency spectrum, the FAS Russia approved the transaction.
According to the antimonopoly authority, the access to the released radio frequency spectrum for construction of the 5G networks and the subsequent provision of 5G mobile wireless communications is an opportunity to provide a new generation of communication services on the territory of the Russian Federation.
* A mobile network operator that implements the business model of mobile wireless communications using the nodal elements of the communication network of other mobile network operators.
Russian network operator MTS will not participate in this joint project. However, MTS has launched its pilot 5G network in St Petersburg. Broadband at up to 1.5 Gbps speed is available at 16 crowded locations in the city, as well as in the town of Kronshtadt in the St Petersburg region.
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You can watch a June 3rd video (no sound for 1st 7 1/2 minutes) of “5G: The Architecture Backbone of Russia’s Digitalization” from the St Petersburg Forum here.
One speaker said that 5G will have a very long time horizon. In Moscow, 5G will have a circle of people or narrow audience which will help pay for the 5G infrastructure buildout. Also, private 5G industrial solutions will develop in the largest Russian companies. Global competition will drive those companies to offer 5G. We’ll see…
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Separately, Rostelecom has opened a new data center located in the Kalininsky district of St. Petersburg, the 4,000 sq m (43,000 sq ft) facility is built to Tier-III standards and has a total capacity of 800 racks and a capacity of 7.4MW.
The company said the facility will offer hosting, cloud services, as well as redundancy and disaster recovery services in tandem with its data centers in Moscow and Udomlya.
References:
https://www.telecompaper.com/news/russian-operator-agree-to-jointly-develop-5g–1385583
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/rostelcom-opens-data-center-in-st-petersburg-
https://forumspb.com/en/programme/business-programme/91424/#broadcast