Shares "Yoty" divided between "MTS", "MegaFon", "VimpelCom", "Rostelecom" and "Russian Technologies" in the name of the construction of the all-Russian LTE network

About two hours ago (March 3, at 12:40 pm ) , a sensational article “ Yota divided into four ” appeared on the Vedomosti website, in which V. Putin’s intention to personally visit the office of the operator Scartel (the owner of the Yota brand ), where an epochal agreement can be signed, which will make four other operators (MTS, Megafon, Vimpelcom, Rostelecom) shareholders of Scartel in equal shares (20% each), and another 20% will remain State Corporation "Russian Technologies" (currently having a share of 25.1%).

As a result of this transaction, both the Big Three operators, Rostelecom and Yota will receive from the state the desired right to provide LTE services, including mobile Internet up to 326.4 megabits per second. To do this, Vedomosti writes, you need frequency bands of 20 MHz in each direction, but the state has practically no free frequencies, but Scartel has a set of frequencies in the largest 180 cities of Russia (in the range from 2.5 to 2.7 GHz), which can be combined with the frequencies of the "lower range" (800-900 MHz) and used to build the LTE network. In turn, Scartel will receive permission from Roskomnadzor to use all those additional frequencies that were first issued to him at the beginning of 2010, and then (at the end of July) revoked by orders of the same department.

This stunning news, if it really comes to pass, will certainly mark the beginning of the all-Russian construction of LTE networks in major cities (first of all, Scartel will reopen its LTE project in Kazan, I suppose). However, I myself live outside the narrow space of the 180 largest cities of Russia, and from that I will not be either hot or cold. But I see that the excellent Tele2 discounter operator , whose services I now use in Gelendzhik through EDGE, has once again alienated frequencies from all over Russia (as it happened in Moscow), despite its Scandinavian experience in LTE construction. I also gloomily assume that the inhabitants of these 180 cities will forever and irreversibly overtake the rest of Russia in speed of the mobile Internet, overtake them by several decimal orders of magnitude. Digital divide.
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My congratulations to those of you who will surely fall into this digital paradise. Forgive me my provincial cynicism.

A quick postscript about the development of events: at 13:36 a similar article appeared in Gazeta.ru, and at 14 o'clock - a brief note in the “Kommersant-News”. The final chord at 15:09 sounded PRIME-TASS : the agreement was signed in the presence of Putin.