India, Russia may team-up to produce telecom hardware
According to Telecom and IT Minister A Raja, India and Russia could set up a joint venture for producing telecom hardware to meet the growing domestic demand even as government readies to roll out 3G and WiMax broadband in the country.
Raja told reporters that Russia is among the four countries, including the US, Taiwan and Korea, which have the capacity of making silicon chips for 3G and WiMax. The idea of an Indo-Russian JV in India came up after Raja visited the Micron Company, which produces silicon chips.
According to Raja, it is an integrated company with full cycle of production from silicon wafers to micro chips. India will welcome technical and financial contribution from Russia in the JV.
Russia is among the first few countries to implement commercial cellular networks of WiMax. At present they function in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sochi and some other cities.
Raja is the first Indian Telecom and IT Minister to visit Russia after the former IT Minister Pramod Mahajan’s Moscow visit in September 2001. The government then had promised to invest heavily in the Russian IT sector, famous for its Hi-End software.
Raja also visited the hi-tech Emergency Response Centre of the disaster management authority of the country in Moscow, which continuously receives online data from all over the country and automatically disseminates it among the concerned bodies.
Raja had discussed with his Russian counterpart Igor Shchegolev in Moscow to explore the possibilities for interaction in IT and telecom.
According to Raja, they believe that joint work will bring information and communication technology to the masses. The two sides have agreed to sign a MoU to this effect.
The Russian IT and Mass Media Minister Shchegolev told Raja that they believe, this technology is ready for export.
The two ministers expressed satisfaction at the ongoing bilateral cooperation in the space-based navigation system GLONASS and productive activities of Russian-Indian venture Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), marketing cellular services in India under MTS brand.
MTS,Sberbank launches Automatic Top-Up service
MTS Russian and CIS mobile operator in cooperation with Sberbank has launched an automatic payment system which will provide its pre-paid customers with an option to top-up their mobiles by debiting bank accounts.
Sberbank is the largest credit institution in Russia and CIS, with over 20,000 branches across Russia.
The new service is called Auto-payment and allows users to make automatic money transfers to their mobiles by pre-specified amounts up to a maximum of US$321.67once a mobile account reaches a US$0.965 level. No commission is charged for the transaction.
The service is already accessible in Moscow and will be launched in other cities soon.
Sky Link contracts Alca- Lu for CDMA network upgrade (Russia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Russian CDMA network, Sky Link and Alcatel-Lucent has signed an agreement as per which the latter will upgrade the operator’s network to 3G/CDMA2000 1x-EVDO Revision B radio access network functionality.
Sky Link would be able to increase network capabilities without radio channel widening with the help of the EV-DO Rev. B (Evolution-Data Optimized Revision B) standard, entirely based on IP. The data speed rates could also be increased from subscriber to base station – up to 3.9 Mbit/s and from base station to subscriber – up to 6.2 Mbit/s. Up gradation of EV-DO network is also on Sky Link’s cards, currently operating in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Krasnodar.
Alcatel-Lucent’s mobile network equipment is successfully used by the telco in territories for years – covering amongst others our 3 largest and most important regions mentioned above.
According to Gulnara Khasyanova, ZAO Sky Link’s general director, Alca Lu will help the telco to realize an increase in network capacity of at least 15% and provide its customers with mobile broadband access services that surpass the competitors offering in data speed and end-user experience
Comstar to be branded as MTS by end- 2011 (Russia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Re-branding of Comstar’s services to the MTS brand has been announced by Russian operators Comstar and MTS and the process is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.
Two brands namely MTS brand and the MGTS brand used by the Moscow fixed operator will be used going forward.
Comstar currently uses the Stream brand for its service and it will be transitioned to the name MTS Stream by the end of 2011.
Russia’s MTS customer base rises 7.1% in 2009
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With an increase of 7.1% year-on-year, the consolidated customer base of Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) group reached 97.81 million, up from 91.33 million. Even the flagship domestic operation of the company had 69.3 million customers at year-end, up nearly five million from a year earlier.
However, a decline in the customer base has been faced by MTS in its Moscow market from 14.9 million at end-2008, to 13.6 million a year later. While growth was recorded in all MTS markets, only one international market, MTS Ukraine saw its customer base falling from 18.12 million to 17.56 million year-on-year.
The cellco’s operations in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Belarus ended 2009 with 7.07 million, 1.76 million, 2.07 million and 4.56 million customers respectively.
Moscow capacity tripled by Rostelecom
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The overhaul of the Moscow traffic exchange has been completed by the Russian long-distance carrier Rostelecom resulting in the tripling of the capacity to 30Gbps in response to growing local internet traffic.
State-owned conglomerate Svyazinvest that holds controlling interest in Rostelecom forms a major part of the company’s restructuring plans.
With the aim to provide fixed line telephony, broadband and mobile services across the whole country, Svyazinvest has planned to combine its seven regional fixed line operators with Rostelecom
DWDM backbone launched by Orange Business
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 3,500km dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) backbone network will be launched by Orange Business Services to provide services to Orange corporate customers. The network will stretch 8,500km, extending the Moscow-Samara-Yekaterinburg DWDM network, which also connects Ryazan, Penza, Tambov, Ulyanovsk, Ufa and Chelyabinsk.
The operator has also launched a local access Metro Ethernet network with more than 20 communication nodes in Rostov-on-Don, and an inter-city coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) network supporting transmission speeds of up to 10Gbps.
Russian mobile operators to launch 3G service in Moscow
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: OAO Mobile TeleSystems, OAO VimpelCom and OAO MegaFon- three major mobile operators of Russia received permission to launch third-generation networks in Moscow. The announcement was made more than a year after they launched similar services in cities elsewhere in the country.
All the three companies won the license to operate 3G networks across Russia in 2007 itself but could not launch the service as the Ministry of Defence was using the frequencies that they required in that city.
The companies have already installed 3G equipment at some of their base stations in anticipation of the ministry’s decision. They will now offer their Moscow subscribers special tariffs to take advantage of the 3G network’s higher speeds.
Russia’s antitrust service acts vs. 3 biggest mobile operators
MOSCOW, August 17 (RIA Novosti) – Mobile TeleSystems [RTS: MTSS], VimpelCom [NYSE: VIP] and MegaFon [RTS: MEGF] are facing action from
Russia’s Anti-Monopoly Service. The service said Thursday it was moving against the country’s three biggest mobile operators in the wake of a check into new tariffs used by them for mutual settlements, below the rates set for other mobile operators. It said the “big three” were using a rate of 0.95 rubles ($0.0351) per connection, whereas other operators had to pay 1.1 rubles ($0.037) for the same service, or 16% more, which put them at a disadvantage. It said regional operators and operators entering the mobile services market were in an unequal position compared with the established federal operators, which breached anti-monopoly laws.
The case will be heard on September 28.
Source- http://en.rian.ru
