President of Tele2 Russia gave an interview to Kommersant on the struggle for LTE

In yesterday’s November 1 issue of the Kommersant newspaper, it’s not difficult to see Dmitry Strashnov’s interview with the subtitle President of Tele2 Russia Dmitry Strashnov on the operator’s fight for LTE.

Some of this interview will not be a novelty for the reader, who managed to read the news of mid-September . As before, we see the declaration of intent of Tele2 to participate in tenders for frequencies that will take place early next year, and we still see Tele2’s desire to consistently implement the principle of technological neutrality, that is, to uphold the operator’s rights to use any technologies in that spectrum frequency, which is allocated to the operator.

But we also see Tele2's new step: communication with the Main Radio Frequency Center (HRDC) for obtaining such permission to use radio frequencies in the Pskov and Omsk regions, which will allow Tele2 to go on the air with LTE transmitters and show in practice the compatibility of the two technologies in the same radio band.
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We are talking about testing in an important enough range - 1800 MHz.

Interestingly, Anna Balashova (interviewer) mentioned in one of the questions that the LTE consortium (in Rostelecom and the Big Three) was instructed to conduct additional studies on the development possibilities of LTE in the bands that are now used for GSM mobile communication (900 and 1,800 MHz), by March 2012. Strashnov answered her the opposite: “as far as I understand, the consortium does not plan to conduct tests in the 1800 MHz band at all. Time will tell which of these two mutually contradictory opinions will be closer to the true state of affairs.

The president of Tele2 Russia also announced interesting facts about the planned ratio of voice and LTE traffic: “On networks in the 1800 MHz band, 5 MHz from 15 MHz available for LTE development can be distinguished. The remaining 10 MHz without any problems will be able to maintain the voice quality in the GSM network, which is necessary for our subscribers. Perhaps, to preserve the quality, it will be necessary to carry out a certain network upgrade, to increase the number of base stations, but by no more than 5-7%. ” (And further estimates of the possible costs of this.) What is appropriate to compare with the opposite opinion of Minister Shchyogolev, which I mentioned in mid-September .

I am pleased to see Tele2’s stubbornness as a champion of technological neutrality, intending to cut off the path and achieve the earliest possible introduction of a new technology in the same range, although personally my view on the prospects for LTE in Russia remains very bleak.