Deputy PM asks Putin to order govt to speed up work with 5G nets

MOSCOW, Apr 19 (PRIME) -- Russian Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov has asked President Vladimir Putin to order the government to speed up creation of 5G and estimated investments of companies in the new connection standard at about 650 billion rubles, according to a statement released Friday on the Kremlin’s website.

“This model (5G) enables to have mobile Internet that is ten times cheaper than for example in the U.S. and three times cheaper than in Europe with a very high quality,” Akimov told Putin.

“The situation is difficult. We have a frequency range we can allocate, but it will result in monopolization of the market. The upper band of 3.4–3.8 GHz is mainly used for special purposes.”

Akimov said that creation of 5G networks will cost about 650 billion rubles. “We would not like to see all this money, or the bulk of it, be given to foreign vendors, suppliers of equipment, which are so-called big three – Cisco, Huawei, and Nokia,” he said.

“It’s clear that these companies have stable positions in Russia and there will be competition. Rules of localization in creation of 5G connection should be also strict.”

The country has not deñided on the model of 5G development yet.

(64.0688 rubles – U.S. $1)

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