Beeline launches first commercial 3G network in Central region of Russia
VimpelCom (which operates under the Beeline trademark) has announced the commercial launch of its mobile 3G network in Tambov. To date this is the first commercial UMTS network in Central region of Russian Federation.
According to company's data, at the moment VimpelCom equipment in Tambov supports data transfer rates up to 1.3 Mb/sec. Today UMTS network in Tambov covers most densely populated parts of the city. That means 40% of Tambov mobile subscribers can use 3G services. The company plans to extend the network during the year. In 2007 Tambov population was 279.8 thousand citizens.
In 2008 Beeline 3G networks were launched for commercial use in more than 40 Russian cities. Today Russian subscribers use 19 million GSM handsets with UMTS support, that is 20% of the total number of handsets in the country.
В© Oxana Vassilyeva
