MOSCOW, Oct 3 (Prime-Tass) -- Ukraine's second largest mobile operator Ukrainian Mobile Communications, or UMC, a subsidiary of Russia's MTS, has received a CDMA-450 license for voice services, UMC's spokesman Vitaly Mukhin said, Vedomosti business daily reported.
UMC's General Director Adam Voyatski said that UMC paid 9 million hryvnas to get a license for voice services, Kommersant Ukraine business daily reported Monday.
The company bought the CDMA-450 license for non-voice services in July. UMC paid a total of 94 million hryvnas for the right to operate in the CDMA-450 standard, Kommersant Ukraine reported.
UMC provides mobile services in GSM 900/1800 and NMT-450 standards. The latter is an outdated standard for 450MHz frequencies, which are also used under CDMA-450 standards.
UMC planned to upgrade its outdated network to CDMA-450, but wanted to focus on providing mobile Internet services rather then voice services through the upgraded network, Voyatski said earlier.
UMC, which is fully controlled by Russia?s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), had about 15.933 million mobile service users as of August 31, according to Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M).
Meanwhile, Alexei Danilin, an analyst at iKS-Consulting, suggested that UMC's CDMA-450 license may be used for Russian CDMA operator Sky Link's expansion into Ukraine.
Both MTS and Sky Link are affiliates of major Russian holding AFK Sistema. Sky Link operates in about 25 of Russia?s 88 regions and had 305,000 users as of January 1.
(5.05 hryvnas - U.S. $1)
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Posted to the site on 3rd October 2006
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/19679.php