Russia’s main mobile operators are to team with mobile broadband service provider Yota on a LTE network sharing deal. The network will be built by Yota and will enable MegaFon, MTS, Rostelecom and VimpelCom to provide high-speed mobile broadband services across 180 cities (with a total population of more than 70 million citizens) by 2014, without building separate networks. “The deal will see Yota become the 4G network provider for the Russian telecoms market,” notes a statement, adding that the deal is a major boost to the Russian economy: “Businesses will avoid costly duplication of infrastructure investment and millions of Russian consumers will benefit from faster access to 4G services and lower prices.”

The four mobile operators have the option to buy equal stakes (reported to be 20 percent) in Yota after 2014. Certainly the deal is a huge boost for Yota; the company already has LTE spectrum in the majority of Russian cities. Back in November Mobile Business Briefing reported that it was planning on switching from WiMAX technology to LTE in all its markets and was looking to adopt a new business model. “To expand really fast we can’t continue in this way,” Yegor Ivanov, Yota’s director of business development, told Mobile Business Briefing at the time. “We don’t want to have a telco legacy – ideally we want to partner with companies… a franchising model is what we want.” Yota’s statement today said that the Russian deal “sees the realisation of Yota’s vision of the future of telecoms; the ability to offer open infrastructure to competing service providers.”