Russian operator Scartel is going through an acquisition by Megafon, and its vision of supporting wholesale LTE services for all four national operators appears to have been thwarted, but it is still investing in a cutting edge network.
The company has deployed LTE microcells in major urban areas, a first for Russia, to add capacity and coverage to its 4G systems. Scartel, which operates under the Yota brand, has been migrating its original WiMAX network to LTE and supporting wholesale services, mainly for Megafon.
The microcells are supplied by NEC and have initially been installed in major cities including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar and Sochi. The base stations support MOCN (Multi-operator Core Network) so that multiple carriers can share the same infrastructure.
The Japanese vendor also says it supports a unique radio resource management technology which reduces capex and opex costs; as well as HetNet functionality, allowing base stations with different air interfaces to work together; and self-organizing network features.
Scartel was one of the first carriers to deploy some LTE-Advanced features, notably carrier aggregation, working on that project with Huawei.