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Russian operators to roll out 1,300 LTE base stations across 10 regions.
Vimpelcom and MegaFon on Tuesday announced plans to build out a joint LTE network in 10 Russian regions.
The mobile operators said they will share the cost of the network build and its operation, thereby enabling them to accelerate LTE coverage. However, they did not say how much the rollout will cost.
The project will see them deploy 1,300 new LTE-enabled base stations across the regions.
They expect to launch the network after the end of the second quarter of this year.
"The implementation of a joint RAN-sharing project with Vimpelcom will allow us to enhance harmoniously our infrastructure in the 1800-MHz band in the most efficient way," said MegaFon’s chief technology officer Alexander Bashmakov, in a statement.
"With this project, we are going not only to improve the existing network significantly, but also to rapidly launch LTE in new locations in the selected regions at a minimum cost," he added.
MegaFon also noted that the project will constitute "a big step" in addressing digital inequality.
Martin Skop, EVP for infrastructure development at Vimpelcom Russia, pointed out that the network-sharing project is in no small part driven by the growing demand for mobile data.
Vimpelcom saw the number of LTE devices on its network grow 3.3-fold in 2015, while its LTE traffic multiplied by a factor of four.
"We anticipate that the trend of growing mobile data usage will increase in 2016 and beyond," Skop said.
"To develop our network, we use the most effective approaches. That, we believe, allows our customers to embrace new services with improved quality sooner, while we can maintain the high speed of implementing the latest technologies in the new economy, in the most cost-effective manner," he added. "With the start of this project with MegaFon, we have the widest 4G/LTE network sharing partnership programme of any Russian mobile operator."
