Russian WiMax pioneer Yota had to turn on LTE networks overnight

14.06.2012
Russian mobile operator Yota bravely stepped out with one of the world's first large-scale WiMax networks in 2008. Making the switch to LTE four years later, when the whole world had already signed on to that technology, may have taken even more courage.

That's because Yota had to turn on its first big-city LTE networks without any testing. The carrier is still trying to optimize its networks to gain the speeds it expected from LTE. But it's still committed to the technology.

Vartan Khachaturov, Yota's chief quality officer, described the company's LTE adventure at the Next Generation Mobile Networks conference in San Francisco on Thursday, where carriers and vendors discussed the promise and challenges of LTE, the world's first globally endorsed cellular technology.

Yota is dealing with many of the same issues facing all mobile operators, including limited spectrum and fast-growing demand for capacity. Like others, it is looking toward small cells and other techniques to keep its service fast and available. But Yota is different from most carriers in developed countries.

For example, the capacity crunch has hit hard at Yota, because it offers unlimited data and its subscribers don't hold back: The average Yota subscriber uses 15 gigabytes per month, and some consume a terabyte per month. And the streaming video that many carriers talk about isn't what's driving that usage. Yota's customers get their movies from file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent.

"It's torrents, and torrents, and torrents," Khachaturov said.