Belarusian cellco life:) to launch LTE in July
15/06/2016
According to TeleGeography Sergei Poblaguev, the director general of Belarusian LTE infrastructure provider Belarusian Cloud Technologies (beCloud), says that domestic mobile operator Belarusian Telecommunications Network (BeST, life:)) will start offering 4G services commercially in July.
Onliner.by quotes the official as saying that from Q4 2016 his company – which is tasked with rolling out a common 4G network in Belarus that can be used by life:) and the two other players, MTS Belarus and velcom – intends to start expanding its 4G LTE networks to regional centres, while in Minsk coverage will be expanded three-fold by the end of this year. Moreover, by the same date beCloud intends to introduce LTE at 2600MHz, to augment the 1800MHz-based services currently on offer. An update was published in March 2016 in which beCloud noted that its 4G network had been boosted to a total of 150 base stations in high traffic areas of the capital, adding that by end-2016 it hopes to have extended coverage to the regional cities of Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel, Grodno and Mogilev.
TeleGeography notes that MTS Belarus went live with its commercial 4G offering in December 2015 and reported 91,000 subscribers to the new service as at end-March 2016. By contrast, velcom is still to announce its plans in this area, with Poblagueva only confirming that, at this time, talks between the two firms are ongoing.
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