Part of the federal highways in the Russian Federation will not be covered by the Internet

Part of the Russian federal highways will not be covered by high-speed mobile Internet due to the inability to connect cellular equipment to the power grid. Therefore, operators will be relieved of the burden of covering such roads in a number of regions. This follows from the materials of the State Commission on Radio Frequencies (GCRF), which Izvestia has reviewed. In particular, we are talking about sections of federal highways in the Arkhangelsk, Vladimir, Vologda, Orenburg, Samara, and Chelyabinsk regions.

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However, as the interdepartmental working group under the Ministry of Finance, established in 2023, found out, the infrastructure necessary for the construction of LTE networks is available only on 10% of the highway sections surveyed by it. In this regard, the remaining 90% of uncovered sections of federal highways cannot be provided with LTE coverage, according to the materials of the state commission.

"The draft decision of the State Emergency Committee specifies the coordinates of points on the roads between which there is no connection and there will be no connection. So far, the state commission wants to remove obligations from cellular operators to cover more than 1,608 km of federal highways with LTE networks. Hundreds of kilometers of federal highways still do not have LTE coverage. This is economically unprofitable for operators: they do not want to install base stations where few cars pass and, accordingly, they will not be able to recoup their investments due to the large volume of telecom traffic," says Leonid Konik, partner at Comnews Research.

The decision of the SCRC is a precedent — it is important to understand whether it will be the only one of its kind, or whether the encumbrances from the operators will be removed in the future, says Konstantin Ankilov, CEO of TMT Consulting. Indeed, there is no electricity on many sections of the tracks, installing generators there and constantly bringing fuel to them is not an option, he noted.

According to him, plans for Internet coverage of federal highways are becoming more realistic — it is worth improving communication, first of all, where possible from the point of view of energy, the expert points out. As for covering roads with low-orbit communications satellites, this is a matter of at least the early 2030s, the expert concluded.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Road check: Internet won't appear on part of federal highways