LIVE FROM MOBILE 360 EURASIA, MOSCOW: Tele2 Russia CEO Sergey Emdin (pictured) highlighted an opportunity for domestic retailers to use 5G to boost customer engagement by offering MVNO services.

In a keynote, Emdin noted retailers in the US and UK had enjoyed success with MVNO offers, and noted unique 5G features including network slicing make the technology particularly well-suited to the model, by enabling networks to be adjusted to match requirements.

However, the executive acknowledged it will be at least two years before the first 5G networks are available in the country, due to “challenges in spectrum” allocation.

One such challenge was a recent government decision to offer the 3.5GHz band to Russia’s military, meaning operators won’t be able to use it for 5G services. Despite this, Emdin predicted the nation would quickly overcome spectrum hurdles “and we will make our clients happy with the quality of future product” including 5G-enabled MVNO services.

The country today has 2 million MVNO subscribers: GSMA Intelligence previously predicted 5G user numbers in the country could hit 48 million by 2025.