MTS Belarus rolls out UMTS-900 to ‘almost all’ of Minsk region

Belarusian mobile operator MTS Belarus says that in the past month it has rolled out an additional 52 UMTS-900 base transceiver stations (BTS) to boost coverage to 80% of the Minsk region. The firm’s technical director Alexey Grave notes that, in the past, domestic operators have tended to focus their deployments on urban zones, but as demand for higher data speeds increases it has turned its attention to providing improved mobile internet services to the rural population – to take advantage of the fact that it is licensed for the 900MHz band. Mr Grave says that UMTS-900 is a technology that will allow MTS Belarus to deliver the mobile internet to virtually ‘every house’ across the country to provide the same blanket coverage currently afforded by 2G. This month the operator has set its sights on a number of target areas, including Vileyka, Pukhovichi, Soligorsk and Smolevichi, with the connection of other settlements in the region, and the capital Minsk, planned for the coming months.