According to the draft amendment to the “Communications Industry Development Strategy 2035”, the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation will increase the average speed of mobile networks five times in an optimistic scenario – from 24.7 Mbit/s to 125 Mbit/s by 2025. The basic option is to increase the speed to 80 Mbit/s. The plan is to achieve this goal by doubling investment in fixed capital in the industry (up to 1-1.2 trillion rubles) and deploying 5G networks, with the goal of covering 15% to 30% of the country’s population.
Experts interviewed by the publication noted that achieving the set goals is realistic but is limited by the speed of domestic telecom equipment production and the modernization of current LTE networks. The latter plans to use carrier frequency aggregation, MIMO technology and the migration of outdated 3G frequencies to LTE standards. At the same time, the first phase of fifth-generation networks will become more niche solutions for enterprise customers and industrial production, while for most private users, the functions of modern 4G networks are still more than sufficient.
