Russian operators announce Wi-Fi collaboration

Five Russian communications firms – Comstar-UTS, Interregional TranzitTelekom, PeterStar, Prostor Telecom and Tango Telecom – have formed a partnership to launch commercial WLAN roaming across 17 cities in the country. Cities to be covered include Moscow, St Petersburg, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk and Sochi. Comstar-UTS and Tango Telecom are launching bilateral roaming within the project, i.e. all companies’ subscribers are able to use the access parameters received from their operator both in the ‘home’ and ‘guest’ networks. The Wi-Fi network aggregator for the project is MTT, which will provide the internet traffic exchange and collect the tariffs to carry out inter-operator payments. PeterStar has agreed to provide unilateral roaming, whereby its subscribers can connect to Comstar-UTS, Tango Telecom and Prostor Telecom. However, the subscribers of Comstar, Tango and Prostor are not able to connect to PeterStar network. PeterStar explained to CNews: ‘That is related to economic reasons. The roaming might become bilateral in the future.’

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