Russia’s Scartel to launch LTE networks in six cities on Wednesday

MOSCOW, Dec 24 (PRIME) -- Russian wireless broadband operator Scartel known by the Yota brand plans to launch commercial operations of its fourth generation (4G) Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in six cities on Wednesday, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

The networks will be launched in the cities of Cheboksary, Irkutsk, Kirov, Omsk, Penza, and Ulyanovsk, RIA Novosti’s IT and telecom news portal reported.

Scartel will simultaneously start sales of the Yota-branded modems and routers supporting the LTE technology via the outlets of large consumer electronics retailers including Svyaznoy, Euroset, M.Video, re:Store, and others.

Scartel obtained the frequencies in the 2.5–2.7 GHz range suitable for the development of LTE services in 2011. Now, Scartel’s LTE networks are also used by major mobile operator MegaFon under the mobile virtual network operator (MNVO) model. Scartel now operates LTE networks in about 20 of Russia’s 83 regions.

MegaFon, which closed a deal to acquire 100% of Scartel for 37.654 billion rubles in October 2013, now plans to buy Scartel’s infrastructure in order to reduce costs of network maintenance.

(32.9506 rubles – U.S. $1)

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