President of Tele2 Russia gave an interview to Kommersant about the fight for LTE

In yesterday’s (November 1) issue of Kommersant newspaper, it’s easy to see Dmitry Strashnov’s interview with the subtitle “Tele2 Russia President Dmitry Strashnov about the operator’s struggle for LTE”.

Some of this interview will not be new to the reader, who managed to get acquainted with the news of mid-September . As before, we see the declaration of Tele2 intentions to participate in competitions for frequencies that will take place at the beginning of next year, and as before, we see Tele2's desire to consistently implement the principle of technological neutrality, that is, to assert the operator’s rights to use any technology in that spectrum frequencies that the operator is allocated.

But we also see a new step of Tele2: communication with the Main Radio Frequency Center (RFRC) to obtain such permission for the use of radio frequencies in the Pskov and Omsk regions that will allow Tele2 to go on air with LTE transmitters and show in practice the compatibility of the two technologies in one radio band.

We are talking about tests in a fairly important range - 1800 MHz.

It is interesting that Anna Balashova (interviewed) mentioned in one of the questions that the LTE consortium (consisting of Rostelecom and the Big Three) was instructed to conduct additional studies of LTE development opportunities in the ranges that are now used for GSM mobile communications (900 and 1800 MHz), by March 2012. Strashnov answered the opposite to her: "as far as I understand, the consortium does not plan to conduct tests in the 1800 MHz band at all." Time will show which of these two conflicting opinions will be closer to the true state of affairs.

The president of Tele2 Russia also announced interesting facts regarding the planned correlation of voice and LTE traffic: “On networks in the 1800 MHz range, 5 MHz out of 15 MHz available for LTE development can be allocated. The remaining 10 MHz will be able to maintain the quality of voice communication in the GSM network, which is necessary for our subscribers, without any problems. Perhaps, to maintain the quality, it will be necessary to upgrade the network, increase the number of base stations, but by no more than 5-7%. ” (And further estimates of the possible costs of this.) What is appropriate to compare with the opposite opinion of Minister Shchegolev, which I mentioned in mid-September .

I am glad to see Tele2's persistence as an advocate of technological neutrality, intending to cut the path and achieve the early introduction of new technology in the previous range, although my personal view on LTE prospects in Russia remains very gloomy.