KazakhTelecom to invest $400 million in 4G network development

KazakhTelecom to invest about $400 million in Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology aiming at 4G network development, Tengrinews.kz reports, referring to Arnur Nurkatov, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. “LTE is a big project. Our consultants haven’t announced the exact cost yet. However the total will make up about $400 million to be invested till 2015,” he said at the meeting with the media on Tuesday, May 15. According to Nurkatov, the company is planning to implement pilot projects introducing LTE in Almaty and Astana. 3GPP Long Term Evolution is the name of the mobile data transfer technology. 3GPP project is a standard project of CDMA, UMTS technologies development to meet the growing demand of data transfer speed. The 3GPP LTE data transfer speed is 173 Megabits per second for incoming data and 58 Megabits per second for outgoing data. KaazakhTelecom company is the leading communications provider in Kazakhstan. Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund (51%), Bodam B.V. (16.87%) and Deran Services Limited (9.61%) are the key shareholders of the company.