Translated material
Three out of thirteen
The Big Three received licenses for third-generation cellular communications
At the end of last week, the results of the final meeting of the competition commission of the Federal Communications Agency (Rossvyaz) for the distribution of licenses for third generation mobile communication services (3G) were announced. The winners were the "big three" - OJSC Megafon, OJSC Mobile Telesystems (MTS) and OJSC VimpelCom (Beeline). Commercial operation of 3G networks in Russia is expected to begin next year. The competitive promises of the winning operators regarding the timing and volume of construction of 3G networks are fixed in the terms of the licensing agreements.13 companies submitted applications to participate in the competition. By early April, the commission had retained seven applicants for further consideration. The rest were excluded from participation in the competition for various reasons, in particular due to the lack of other necessary licenses. Deputy Head of the Federal Communications Agency (Rossvyaz) Svetlana Vlasova is confident that attempts to challenge the commission’s decision in court are futile: “A lot of work has been done. The competition was organized correctly, the commission made the right decision, and the screening of participants was justified.”
In most European countries, third generation networks are already operating, and subscribers are starting to get used to video calls and fast mobile Internet. 3G test sites were organized and tested by Russian operators several years ago, and Megafon has since managed to build and launch a 3G network in Tajikistan. According to the general director of the company, Sergei Soldatenkov, this network operates quite successfully and serves its subscribers.
Meanwhile, Russia has fallen behind in issuing licenses? The President of the Infocommunication Union, Alexander Krupnov, is confident that there is no lag, but work on the mistakes of European companies: thanks to this pause, Russia has the opportunity to step over the unsuccessful stages of development and immediately build 3G networks based on the latest technologies.
Phone manufacturers have been ready for 3G for a long time. Today, every tenth handset sold in Russia can operate in third generation networks, and the certification of these devices is of a notification nature. Regarding the transmitting equipment of base stations, says Svetlana Vlasova, the certification procedure is planned to be completed by the end of summer. As for the services themselves, as noted by First Deputy General Director of Megafon OJSC Alexey Nechiporenko: “In principle, the existing (GSM. - Ed. ) network allows us to provide almost all (3G. - Ed. ) services. Yes, on the GSM network it is impossible to download a full-fledged video with good resolution and make a video call, since this requires a high data transfer speed, but all other services are already working." Thus, it’s just a matter of deploying the networks themselves. Painstaking and expensive work with the military lies ahead to clear the radio frequency spectrum bands allocated to them back under socialism, necessary for 3G networks.
However, license holders are full of optimism. President of MTS OJSC Leonid Melamed believes that the third generation network will expand the range of simple and effective telecommunications services of world-class quality provided to subscribers. Although Russians will not be able to take advantage of these opportunities right away. All three operators speak very cautiously on this matter.
According to the most daring forecasts, commercial operation of 3G networks will begin no earlier than next year, and only in certain regions of Russia. By the way, according to Sergei Soldatenkov, it is not at all necessary that the first such regions will be Moscow and St. Petersburg, as one might assume.