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Yota

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WIMAX Holding Ltd.
Company typeLtd
IndustryTelecommunications, Consumer electronics,
Digital distribution
Founded2007 (SLL Scartel)[1]
2008 (ИОО «Yota Бел»)[2]
Area served
Russia Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Sochi, Krasnodar
Belarus Grodno (planned)
Nicaragua Managua (in test operations [3])
Peru (planned)
Ryazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Samara, Tolyatti, Novosibirsk, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Ekaterinburg, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod (planned in 2010) [4]
Key people
Denis Sverdlov
(Russia SLL Scartel), Serguei Adoniev
OwnerTelconet Capital Limited Partnership (74,9 %)
Russian Technologies State Corporation (25,1 %, since 2008 [5])
Number of employees
12,000
SubsidiariesRussia SLL Scartel (Синамакс and Макмис owned by Scartel [6])
Scartel Starlab [7]
More [8]
Belarus ИОО «Yota Бел» (100%[9])
Nicaragua Yota de Nicaragua (75%[10])
Websiteyota.ru


Yota (Russian: Йота) is the trademark of a Russian multinational telecommunications services provider (high speed mobile broadband, video, phone, TV, music, apps) [11]. Yota currently operates in Russia, Belarus and Nicaragua [12] and will launch in Peru very soon [13].


Business Focus

Yota Egg (pictured) looks like Wibro Egg

Since launch, Yota has promised unlimited, high-speed, [mobile internet] access to its customers [14]. The business is focused not on technology, but on the demands of its customers. This ensures that Yota provides the devices, applications, and [bandwidth] that they require while striving to deliver a more tailored and flexible service [15].

Network

Yota was the first Russian internet service provider to launch a high-speed wireless network based on mobile WiMAX [16]. It now has the largest WiMAX network in the world [17]. The network operates under the standard IEEE 802.16e-2005 with very high frequency 2.5-2.7 GHz [18].

As of Autumn 2009 there were operational networks in Moscow (WiMAX 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz. Outdoor UMTS-2100 is not allowed in Moscow), parts of the Moscow Oblast, St. Petersburg, parts of the Leningrad Oblast, Ufa, Sochi and [Krasnodar]. The network is currently being constructed in [Samara] and [Kazan]. It is planned that by Autumn 2012 the network will cover 180 Russian cities with a population of over 100 000 people[19]. Yota began expanding beyond Russia in Spring 2010 with operational networks launching in Managua (Nicaragua)[20], Minsk and Grodno (Belarus) with Lima (Peru) also in development.

As of 2010, average traffic per Yota customer had reached 10GB/month. Video is a main driver of the demand for Yota's service [21].

Yota works with Samsung as its single vendor in all markets. Samsung provides WiMAX base stations in Nicaragua and Belarus. Yota also has strategic partnerships with Intel, HTC, Cisco, Sequans and ASUS [22].

Service plan and subscriptions

As part of a drive for simplicity, Yota only offers one service plan, an unlimited service offered on the same terms to all customers. As of 2010, Yota had 350,000 subscribers, increasing by 3,000 customers per day [23].

Devices, content and applications

Various types of devices provide connection to the Yota network. Among them are laptops (over 50 laptops with a built-in WiMAX module from Acer, ASUS, E-machines, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung, Toshiba [24]), USB modem dongles, desktop modems and a smartphone, the HTC MAX 4G, the world’s first combined GSM+Mobile WiMAX phone.

Yota’s unique mobile services include: mobile IPTV, video-on-demand (Yota is the exclusive provider of digital content from Universal and Disney Studios in Russia), an online music store (with a catalogue of over 700,000 tracks by world leading labels including EMI, Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony Music), a photoblogging portal and many others[25].


Censorship attempt

From 3 to 9 December 2009, several websites, such as kasparov.ru, nazbol.ru, rusolidarnost.ru, rufront.ru, newtimes.ru, kavkazcenter.com, kremlin.ru became unavailable for some users of Yota WiMAX in Moscow, Russia. Some of them suggested it as an attempt to censor websites of political opposition in Russia.

CEO of Scartel LLC. Denis Sverdlov commented to a Russian newspaper Vedomosti, that in November 5, operator got a precaution from the prosecutor's office of St. Petersburg with a recommendation to deny access to extremist sites. In the same time, as Vedomosti noted, the only website listed as extremist resource by the Russian Ministry of Justice is kavkazcenter.ru. Experts, questioned by Vedomosti, suggested that the Skartel company attempted to compose their own list of extremist resources. But the press service of the company rejected such suggestions and claimed that the company blocks only access to extremist resources, recognized as such by Ministry of Justice. The inability to access other sites was explained by the provider with technological reasons: only newer Yota users which obtained recently registered IP addresses with mask 109.188.0.0/16 experienced problems accessing some websites, because these IP addresses were still being filtered by some hosting providers.

By the December 9th Yota restored access to all these sites except kavkazcenter.com, which is still unavailable due to legitimate reasons.[26]

See also

References