MTS Makes 3G Move in Ukraine
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Whilst state-owned Ukrtelecom can lay claim to being the country's only holder of a 3G licence, there would appear to be growing opposition with market leader UMC and the country's smallest operator Telesystems prepared to use CDMA2000 EV-DO technology instead. Fed up at being held back, Russian operator MTS which owns UMC and which has recently won 3G licences in its own domestic market and Uzbekistan, has partnered Alcatel-Lucent for the deployment of an EV-DO network in Ukraine. Alcatel-Lucent itself has teamed up with Kvazar-Micro to build a CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev A 450MHz wireless network for UMC. This will allow Ukraine's second largest mobile operator to introduce 3G mobile services in major cities across Ukraine, where until now Ukrtelecom continues to hold the only W-CDMA licence. Not that the operator has managed to deploy its own 3G network yet, and is unlikely to do so before 2008.