ST. PETERSBURG, Russia-The first commercial CDMA 450 MHz network is to be launched soon in Russia by the St. Petersburg-based carrier Delta Telecom. City streets are already abounding in billboards advertising “Other communications. Not GSM.”
Delta Telecom, an NMT 450 MHz carrier, has been licensed for commercial CDMA 450 MHz network operation in five northwestern regions and will begin with St. Petersburg in December. So far the carrier has installed and switched on 53 out of 60 planned base stations and a switchboard with a capacity of 50,000 clients in the second-biggest Russian city. Delta received a US$15 million credit from the National Reserve Bank to pay for the equipment supplied by Lucent Technologies.
Delta’s Deputy Director General Alexey Blyumin said the network will initially target middle class and corporate clients. “We shall offer them digital telephony and (high-speed) Internet,” he said.
In contrast to Delta, NMT 450 MHz carrier Moscow Cellular Communications (MCC) is unlikely to launch a commercial CDMA 450 MHz network this year. The carrier is currently testing the equipment of Lucent Technologies and Chinese company Huawei, and Deputy Director General Mikhail Kosinov said roaming tests have been successful. MCC is also using a switchboard and base stations from Chinese company ZTE.
Market experts believe the Delta launch will boost the switch of 78 Russian NMT 450 MHz carriers to CDMA 450 MHz technology based on the International Mobile Telecommunications-Multi Carrier (IMT-MC) standard.
Accord-Tel Company, which holds stakes in 39 NMT 450 MHz carriers, announced earlier this year ambitious plans to create a nationwide CDMA 450 MHz operator. “Our company initiated the process of coordinating the unification of Russian NMT 450 carriers. We are sure that only joint effort of all participants in the market can give them a possibility to efficiently move to the new IMT-MC digital standard,” Accord-Tel Board Chairman Vyacheslav Gurkin told the Vedomosti newspaper.
