Base Stations Bring Electricity to Rural Villages

Three rural villages in Armenia's Gegarkunik region have been connected to the mains electricity supply - as a result of the mobile operator, VivaCell-MTS requiring a power supply for its base stations in the region. VivaCell ran high voltage power cables to its Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), and then ran extra power supplies to an electricity sub-station (power transformer) in each of the villages.

The first Base Station located near Yanekh supplies electricity to the villages Yanekh and Karvansara, and the other one located near Selim Mountain Pass supplies the village of Astghadzor. All these three villages which are situated nearly 2300 meters above the sea level are usually covered with snow from late October, and they only use wood to heat their houses.

The infrastructure which will be providing electricity to 203 families includes 1620 meters high-voltage power lines, 56 wooden poles and 3 sub-stations - 1 in each village.

According to figures from the Mobile World subscriber tracker, VivaCell-MTS ended the first half of this year with just under 1.5 million subscribers, and a market share of 69.5%.

Posted to the site on 28th September 2008