Tele2 operator will buy from Ericsson 50 thousand base stations

The Russian mobile operator Tele2, which will soon own Rostelecom, and the Swedish manufacturer of the Ericsson telecommunication equipment concluded a five-year agreement on the supply of 50 thousand base stations that will be established in 27 regions of Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is written by the newspaper "Vedomosti" .

Under the terms of the contract, the Swedish company will supply Tele2 stations that can ensure the work of mobile networks of the second, third, fourth and fifth generations. The parties do not disclose the price of the contract, but we can talk about the amount of 500 million euros, says Consulting CEO Konstantin Ankilov. In turn, the Telecom Daily CEO Denis Kuskov appreciated the purchase of stations along with the costs of installing and laying communications at about $ 2 billion.

According to Roskomnadzor, at the end of the third quarter of 2018 in Russia there were about 657 thousand basic stations, and Tele2 owned 137 thousand stations, ahead of the Vimpelcom in this indicator, but inferior to MTS and Megafon. By the end of last year, the number of stations in the country increased to 686 thousand, and 35% of them were supported by the LTE standard. At the same time, Tele2 was the leader in the development of LTE - now the operator has almost 50 thousand stations supporting this standard.

According to Kuskov, the expansion of LTE coverage is important for Tele2, since the company began to deploy the stations much later than competitors, and it needs to achieve equal communication quality and mobile Internet speeds. Ankilov agrees with this opinion, but notes that the transaction is also important for Ericsson, since recently a major contract with Veon (Vimpelcom’s maternity holding "is a contract for the installation and maintenance of business support systems for operators of the holding: in 2016, Ericsson won Veon, but in 2017 the holding was reported that the holding was reported that the holding was reported that the holding The contract for $ 1 billion is in jeopardy, since Ericsson has not fulfilled its obligations.

In 2017, Ericsson entered into a contract with MTS, under the terms of which by 2020, the company should put equipment and software for deep modernization of LTE networks and preparation for the transition to 5G. According to the representative of MTS Alexei Merkutov, on February 25, MTS and Ericsson signed an agreement on the deployment of the 5G network in 2019.