Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 31
By Fikret Dolukhanov – Trend:
Mobile operator Beeline Uzbekistan is considering a commercial launch of 5G in case if it has the necessary frequency spectrum, Madina Ruzmatova, PR adviser to the Uzbek company, told Trend.
According to her, the technological preparation will take a rather short period, as there are already certain developments with large vendors, partners of the company.
The representative of Beeline noted that the main task of the entire telecom market in Uzbekistan and regulatory authorities is to ensure the standardization of 5G technology in the country.
“It is very early to talk about the transition to this standard. The whole world is only testing this technology, and only a few countries are talking about its commercial use. Most likely, it will be the simultaneous operation of LTE (4G) and 5G standards, but we see great prospects in the development of new generation networks now,” Ruzmatova said.
She reminded that Beeline Uzbekistan conducted the first public testing of 5G technology in the framework of the mobile conference MobiCon in Tashkent on Oct. 11.
“It was an interesting experiment. We witnessed great interest from the participants of the event and enormous potential in the development of this area for our business. The test took place on the 4.5G network, due to the technology standardization not being completed. A maximum speed of 1.3 Gbps was achieved during testing. The test was conducted using the Huawei equipment,” the representative of the mobile operator said.
Ruzmatova added that in 2018, the company managed to complete work on expanding 4G coverage in Tashkent, as well as to expand the LTE network in 37 major cities and historical and cultural centers of the country.
“The next year’s priority is to expand 3G and 4G network capacity in all regions of Uzbekistan. We see a positive trend in terms of growth in the number of 4G users: the number of 4G users has almost reached a million. That is why we plan to significantly expand the capacity of the network. Both technologies have significant demand in the regions, this is also evidenced by the dynamics of growth in the number of mobile Internet users (20 million according to the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications Development of Uzbekistan),” Ruzmatova said.
She added that Beeline Uzbekistan uses Huawei and ZTE equipment to provide communication services.
Beeline is currently the largest mobile operator in Uzbekistan. As of Jan. 1, 2018, the subscriber base of the mobile operator grew to almost 10 million users, which is over 40 percent of the total number of mobile subscribers in the country (22.8 million).
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