The state-owned Ukrtelecom said that it will be pumping $150 million into the network this year alone
Fixedline phone monopoly Ukrtelecom is moving forward with plans to launch Ukraine’s first 3G mobile telecom communications network countrywide next month, the company announced at the end of September.
The launch of the 3G, or third generation, mobile network in the UMTS standard represents the next step in the development of mobile communication technologies in the country, with the main advantages being higher-speed Internet access, large-volume content transmission, improved multimedia possibilities and video calls compared with the second generation options currently available to Ukrainian mobile phone users.
The state-owned Ukrtelecom said that it will be pumping millions of dollars into the development of the system, including $150 million this year alone.
The new network is already in place in Ukrainian cities with populations of more than 1 million – including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Odessa and Lviv – with internal testing of the network and its services currently being conducted.
In December 2006, Telesystems of Ukraine, a telecommunications company that has been providing fixed-line services in parts of the country since 1996, launched mobile communications under the PEOPLENet brand, advertising itself aggressively as a 3G provider. Nevertheless, some industry insiders allege Telesystems’ product falls short of classical 3G services.
In December 2005, Ukrtelecom paid Ukraine’s National Communications Regulation Commission (NCRC) almost $30 million for a license to provide UMTS/WCDMA mobile communications services and almost $300,000 for a license for the radiofrequency to provide the services in this standard.
The granting of the license to Ukrtelecom, a fixed-line telecom provider, aroused sharp criticism from the market’s mobile communication providers, including Kyivstar, MTS (formerly UMC) and Astelit (the life:) brand), who urged the Ukrainian government to withdraw Ukrtelecom’s license and conduct an open tender for a license to launch a 3G network.
At the time, the government refused, leaving Ukrtelecom as the sole telecom company with the right to set up a 3G network, however, in August of this year, the government approved procedures for holding tenders to sell three 3G licenses to other Ukrainian telecommunication companies.
Ukrtelecom said that the launch of its 3G network is currently somewhat hampered by its purchases of equipment, labor and other services, since the company is state-owned and all purchases must be conducted via tenders.
