Tele2 board member Mia Brunell Livfors met with Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Igor Shchegolev during a Russo-Swedish meeting on bilateral commercial relations held in Stockholm in late March, reported Vedomosti, a Russian business daily.
The meeting was confirmed by Ministry spokeswoman Elena Lashkina. Among the issues discussed was Tele2’s participation in Russia’s 4G projects, said Lashkina.
In spite of its strong presence in Russia – the subsidiary of the Swedish telecommunications group is Russia’s 4th mobile operator by volume of subscription, – to date Tele2 has not yet obtained a LTE license. Further, the operator has not even been involved in recent talks held by the Russian government with other leading mobile operators to organize future LTE deployment in Russia.
Tele2’s formal request to the Ministry to take part in the consortium of operators appointed for feasibility studies has gone unanswered, says the company. Neither was the company represented in the recent meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the leading telecommunications operators, where a nationwide LTE deployment strategy seems to have been reached based on the capacities of Scartel, a Russian broadband mobile access provider.
It was just last last January, reminds Vedomosti, that Mr Shchegolev declared to journalists that it was “hard to imagine” a foreign operator like Tele2 having access to such a strategic resource as 4G networks. The frequency conversion procedures required to deploy LTE networks include the modernization of military and other state-owned equipment and the transfer to other bands, reported EWDN earlier this year.
In addition, Tele2, which operates in 37 of Russia’s 83 regions, cannot be considered a fully nationwide operator, argues a Russian expert quoted by Vedomosti.
“We have no foreign state interest regarding Russia’s military secrets,” said Russia’s Tele2 president Dmitry Strashnov to Delovoi Kvartal, an online business publication. “The regulator has to understand that the limited frequency resources must be used rationally, that competition and Western investment are in the state’s interests. We have a precise plan to fight for the frequencies, but I am not going to unveil it. Marshall Zhukov did not unveil his plan before the Battle of Moscow in WW II.”
Shchegolev told Livefors that these issues must be solved “according to the procedures established by Russian law,” said Lashkina.
