Experts: Base station building to slow down heavily in 2022

MOSCOW, Jul 25 (PRIME) -- The Russian market of base stations increased by 11% in 2021 to 810,000, but construction of new base stations will slow down in 2022 significantly because of the sanctions and economic reasons, news and research agency TelecomDaily said on Monday in a statement.

“This year the agency expects the rates of launches will slow down noticeably – new masts will only replace old ones or while optimizing the network by relocating the base stations depending on traffic. Facing the lack of equipment under sanctions, the operators may abandon new base stations in small towns, which has been already agreed with the regulator,” the agency said.

“Besides, they will mainly pause the launch of additional base stations in large cities with high traffic demand.”

The companies that have purchased many base stations over the recent years will win because the period of their exploitation has only started.

T2 RTK Holding, working under the Tele2 brand, increased the number of its stations by 17.7% in 2021 to 205,800. MTS added 14% to 223,400. The number of base stations of VimpelCom, working as Beeline, rose by 7.9% to 177,000 and of MegaFon by 5.3% to 203,600.

In 2020, the country’s market of base stations increased by 14% to 728,000, the agency said.

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