Mobil operators to recoup ERA-GLONASS costs with supplementary services
MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Russia's "big three" mobile operators expect to recoup their spending to provide 100% coverage on Russia's federal highways by providing supplementary services using the infrastructure of the ERA-GLONASS system.
"The big three spent about 2 billion rubles to provide coverage on the Amur highway and will spend over 3 billion rubles more this year to cover other federal highways, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) vice president for operations Alexander Popovsky said at a convention in Moscow on Wednesday.
"These investments, even taking into account the subsidies provided by the state, do not fall into the category of acceptable return on investment. In other words, they are not recoverable," Popovsky said.
Grigory Sizov, the head of M2M at Vimpelcom , said the companies will have to build about 60 base stations alone this year in order to provide coverage on federal highways.
Deployment of the ERA-GLONASS system entails other expenses, Popovsky said, mentioning in particular solutions to support eCall technology (which, among other things, ensures that emergency calls are relayed even by overloaded base stations). The company is currently testing those solutions on its networks.
"Our interest in providing supplementary services based on ERA-GLONASS should be consonant with our investment in ensuring a capable system," he said. "We will insist on the participation in any business models that operate on the basis of that system."
The founders of the non-commercial partnership are NIS GLONASS, Yandex, MegaFon , Rostelecom subsidiary RTComm.RU, Summa Telecom and GLONASS/GNSS Forum.