QArea Analyst
3G coming to Ukraine
Up to the present time only UkrTelecom, the national telecommunications operator and major fixed line telephony provider, has obtained the one and only true 3G license in Ukraine.
Although UkrTelecom obtained 3G license in 2005, it seems reluctant to develop the new standard from zero. Though the three major mobile providers of Ukraine, who applied for the 3G license even earlier than UkrTelecom obtained the one, have already reported their 3G pilot networks passed tests successfully and are still awaiting for The National Commission for Radio Communication of Ukraine to start the tender, as it plans to sell but 3 licenses till the end of the year. UkrTelecom being reluctant to build the 3G infrastructure, GSM and CDMA operators are signaling their readiness to take their time in building the network themselves. UMC, Kyivstar, ITC and Telesystems of Ukraine (having UkrTelecom as one of the founders) announced of having built and successfully tested or building and testing the pilot 3G networks in Kyiv and some major cities of Ukraine with population exceeding million inhabitants.
The specifics of the Ukrainian wireless market, CDMA specifically, can be described as follows:
1) It is restricted and regulated by National Commission on Radio Communication.
2) CDMA operators being local ones (no national CDMA provider with a unified and concordant policy to evolve the domestic CDMA services market).
3) Absence of enthusiastic drive from the executive top management in implementing the new technologies.
4) It is evaluated as the most dynamic in the West and Central Europe.
Keeping in one’s mind the reluctance of the biggest Ukrainian fixed and international telephony provider one can stay quite skeptic as to UkrTelecom’s pioneering step towards 3G. In another light there comes Telesystems of Ukraine, the company with UkrTelecom as a founder.
Much interest was excited by Telesystems of Ukraine’s announcement of the company had set to deploying the third generation mobile communication network (3G) based on 3G "1xEV-DO" (grounded on "CDMA2000 1x"). The company announced it plans to become the national communication provider within the next two or three years, while the first results are expected to be obtained by the end of 2006. At the first stage the new services will be made available for kyivites and megacities. The company is planning to invest 180 mln. USD by the end of 2006.
The new CEO of the company, Vitaly Vorozhbyt who has much experience in mobile communications (he is ex-vice president of UMC) is fond of cutting edge Hi-Tech novelties and he found support to his vision of CDMA capabilities development in this direction with the owners of Telesystems of Ukraine’s. His ideas fit well with the plans of Vadym Shulman’s (owner of the Telesystems of Ukraine) for expansion and merging of the unconsolidated and inactive. Some sources (http://www.mabila.kharkov.ua/
About QArea: http://www.qarea.com QArea is the one of the largest offshore software development companies in Eastern Europe since 2001. Its primary focus is brought upon application development for handheld devices, (J2ME development)
