News
Russian operator MegaFon has appointed Pavel Korchagin appointed as its new chief technology officer following the departure of Alexander Bashmakov, who left the company in June.
The appointment is an internal promotion for Korchagin who previously served as director for the Northwest branch of the company. In his new role, Korchagin will focus on improving the quality of the MegaFon network and also on the company’s digital and infrastructure directions. The infrastructure division is part of MegaFon’s operations unit which is led by chief operating officer, Anna Serebryanikova.
Bashmakov joined MegaFon in March 2012 as chief strategy officer, becoming chief technology officer in 2015. Before to joining MegaFon, he worked at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Accenture where he developed a career in digital technologies and telecoms.
Korchagin has worked at MegaFon for more than 14 years during which he has served as technical director and the first deputy chief executive of Mobicom-Centre, the company’s central Russian branch. In 2014, he became head of the operator’s Volga regional branch before moving, in 2016, to lead the Northwest branch of MegaFon. Korchagin is a graduate of Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a degree in Automated Systems.
At a tradeshow in St Petersburg last month, MegaFon demonstrated a 5G TDD base station from Huawei that used 2 GHz of 70-GHz E-band spectrum to achieve a connection speed of more than 35-Gbps. Other operators are trialling 5G equipment and earlier this year, Tukcell, for example, said it had achieved a 24.7 Gbps connection speed in its first 5G test.
