MTS trying to ease LTE restrictions in Sochi due to Olympics
MOSCOW. June 27 (Interfax) - Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) , one of Russia's top three mobile operators, has made another attempt to ease restrictions on the development of LTE services in Krasnodar Territory related to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
MTS in April asked for changes to be made to a March 16, 2012 decision made by the State Commission for Radio Frequencies (GKRCh) under which the general partners of the Sochi Olympics - MegaFon and national operator Rostelecom - were given exclusive rights to provide LTE services in Krasnodar Territory until December 31, 2016, a draft GKRCh decision for its July 2 meeting shows.
The March 2012 decision states that all companies with a presence in the region who are not partners of the Olympics will not be assigned LTE frequencies until the end of 2016. This essentially means that even if an operator builds a network it will not be able to turn it on and start providing services.
Later, in July 2012, the Federal Communications & IT Oversight Service (Roskomnadzor) held a tender for LTE frequencies (in the 800 MHz and 2.5-2.7 GHz bandwidths) in which MTS, Vimpelcom , MegaFon and Rostelecom were awarded licenses. The tender conditions also included restrictions related to the Olympics, but the wording was different, requiring MTS and Vimpelcom to suspend LTE services in Krasnodar Territory until December 31, 2014.
"We want to bring the license requirements and the GKRCh decision in line with one another," MTS spokesperson Irina Agarkova told Interfax.
MTS is proposing that GKRCh bring the duration of the Olympics frequency restrictions in line with the conditions of the LTE licenses - December 31, 2014, and limit this restriction to the area where the Games will be held.
The draft GKRCh decision for the July 2 meeting states that the Communications Ministry has given a negative opinion on MTS's request, while the Defense Ministry has given its approval. GKRCh itself has not yet taken a position. Commission members held a consensus meeting on Wednesday to work out a final version of the draft decision for the July 2 meeting, but a final resolution was not made on the MTS proposal, one of the participants in the meeting told Interfax.
Operators who did not secure rights to provide LTE services at the Olympics tried to get GKRCh to repeal the March 2012 decision at the end of last year, but were rebuffed, despite the fact that Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov was in favor of lifting the restrictions.
In addition to the top three mobile operators and Rostelecom, LTE frequencies in this region are held by LLC Scartel (Yota) and OJSC Osnova Telecom, which is 75% owned by Vitaly Yusufov's Icominvest and 25% by the Defense Ministry through Voentelecom. Osnova Telecom cannot secure frequency allocations in Krasnodar Territory or the rest of the country at the moment because the military as withdrawn its affirmative opinions on frequencies.
Scartel is already providing LTE services in the region and does not need frequency allocations. It will not even be subject to the requirement to suspend services until December 31, 2014, since it did not receive its frequencies in the tender. Yota is a partner of MegaFon and they jointly launch LTE networks, with MegaFon acting as a virtual operator. Both companies are controlled by Garsdale, the principal shareholder of which is billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
Vimpelcom, which like MTS is subject to the restrictions related to the Olympics, agrees that the commission's March 2012 decision should be changed. "We believe that in this case we're talking more about some kind of technical error that needs to be corrected, since the Olympics themselves will not last until 2016," Vimpelcom spokesperson Anna Aibasheva told Interfax.