The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has approved the communication operators – Rostelecom, Bashinformsvyaz, VimpelCom and MegaFon – to conclude an agreement on the construction of 5G networks. This was announced on Tuesday, May 4, in a statement from the department.
“The agreement on joint activities, if implemented, contains conditions for equal access to radio frequencies for all participants in the mobile radiotelephone market,” the message says.
Thus, the communication operators involved in the transaction must develop and agree on “conditions for the use of infrastructure and (or) the joint use of radio frequencies and the conditions for the provision of infrastructure for MVNOs of communication operators.”
The FAS believes that access to the released radio frequency spectrum for the construction of 5G networks and the further provision of mobile radiotelephone communication services on 5G networks will become an opportunity to provide a new generation of communication services in Russia.
On March 31, Evgeny Novikov, Advisor to the Deputy Head of the Moscow Department of Information Technologies, said that in the near future industrial testing grounds would be launched in the capital to study the possibilities of fifth-generation communications.
As noted by the director of strategic development of Rostelecom Alesya Mamchur, such an ecosystem should consist of at least three players: an industrial customer, a telecom operator and equipment manufacturers. In addition, the importance of attracting IT companies for the development of 5G was noted.
Earlier, on March 5, the operator MTS announced the launch of the country’s first user pilot 5G network in the 4.9 GHz band in Moscow.