Yota will fight for frequency

At today's press conference in RIA Novosti, Yota CEO Denis Sverdlov, stated that the subject of the proceedings is a frequency range of 30 MHz wide from a total band of 70 MHz, respectively, with any court decision, scheduled for the fall of the opening of Yota networks in Kazan, Novosibirsk and Samara will be held as planned. Technically, the 40 MHz band is enough for the full-featured operation of the new technology. The desire of Yota to get a wider band is due to the desire to provide users with new services (in particular, there are rumors about Yota launching voice services based on LTE networks in 2011).



Court
“After permissions to use frequencies are issued, there are only two ways to revoke them. The first is a non-judicial order, the grounds for which are described in detail in the law, and not one of them is suitable for our situation. The second is the court order. That is, Roskomnadzor should do this through the courts. We believe that our documents were received legally, and we will defend our position in court. For this, we are preparing a statement of claim to the Moscow Arbitration Court, where we will appeal against these decisions. ”

The head of the company said that the court decision will definitely be in favor of Iota, because frequencies were obtained legally.

The impact of frequency selection on business
“For our current business, this has no effect because our business plan was originally calculated from 40 Megahertz (from the number of base stations that we planned), revenue, investments, number of subscribers and other aspects. They were all considered based on 40 megahertz. Therefore, this whole story has practically no operational effect on our business. ”

However, another 30 megahertz band is a matter of user comfort. The company has repeatedly stated its intention to do everything for ease of use. The lack of roaming within the country, users of Yota take for granted, while this is a unique offer in Russia. Frequencies are needed so that users do not have to reconfigure their equipment when traveling to other cities in the coverage of Iota.

Innovative company
“In general, we consider ourselves a very innovative company. And this status is confirmed by a large number of international awards. Moreover, in 2009, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev personally handed us a prize called the Breakthrough of the Year. And the situation is such that Dmitry Anatolyevich and Vladimir Vladimirovich support all innovative companies. And it seemed to us that we are the company that personifies this movement, because today we are the largest 4G network in the world. And, in fact, we talked to Dmitry Anatolyevich and Vladimir Vladimirovich about our plans to launch LTE in Russia and that we are strongly supported by regional authorities. And in this aspect, it’s rather strange that despite the focus on the development of innovations in our country, we began to experience very strong pressure from the regulator from the beginning of summer. ”

Of course, there were some interested parties here. Journalists tried to find out about the attitude of the general director of Iota to competitors:

About Osnova and RET
Osnova Telecom focuses on the range of 2.3-2.4. It turns out that for her there is no interest in this situation. Rusenergotelecom claims to have a range of 2.5-2.7. Of course, we cannot say this, but common sense tells us that, probably, if you need to seek a beneficiary in any situation (we, of course, do not believe this), then we can actually recall the frequencies. But if such a situation is hypothetically allowed, then, apparently, it will be beneficial for Rosenergotelecom. As for the deals, I, as the general director of the company, can say that there are no and will not be any deals with Rusenergotelecom, with Grigory Berezkin’s structures. ”


In addition, everyone cares about the urgent issue of network development in other cities, where, as you know, LTE networks will immediately develop instead of the usual WiMax for capitals.

LTE
LTE starts in Kazan and 4 more cities this year. And in the cities in which we are already present - in the 4th quarter of 2011. We have a special unit that deals with subscriber terminals. By the fall of 2010, they will begin to distribute modems. Whose production they will be, I still can not say. We have different scenarios. We are simultaneously working with 3 manufacturers due to the fact that the technology is new, we will choose the device that will be ready by that time.

General questions were also asked about the company's position in the market.

How are you at Yota
We have a little less than 600 thousand subscribers. For 7 months we managed to earn more than 2 billion rubles. In this sense, we are absolutely satisfied with the business. We have a huge number of interesting new developments. More than 1,200 employees. When we started, we were told that it would be great luck and we will be very happy if we get at least more than 10 thousand subscribers per year. Recently, FOM studies were conducted, we ourselves were very pleasantly surprised by the results that in 80% of cases when a customer comes to the store, they recommend him Yota. There was an assumption that this is due to the fact that we pay more to retailers, but, in fact, this is due to the fact that today this service is one of the best on the market. Therefore, if in a nutshell, no matter how this story ends, good or bad (although we believe that it ends well),

The material was compiled following the press conference of Ryan News on August 2, 2010.
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