According to unverified local press reports, Russian telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor has authorised mobile giant Vimpelcom, which operates under the ‘Beeline’ brand, to initiate services based on 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology in Moscow. A total of 100 LTE base stations have already been deployed by vendors Ericsson and Huawei, and the whole of the capital is scheduled to be covered in 2H13.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, in July 2012 Vimpelcom secured a federal licence to provide LTE services in the 800MHz band across the entire Russian territory. The company won 2×7.5MHz blocks of spectrum in the 813.5MHz-821MHz and 854.5MHz–862MHz bands.