Yota

For other uses, see Yota (disambiguation).

WiMAX Holdings Ltd.

Type	Ltd
Industry	Telecommunications, consumer electronics, digital distribution
Founded	2007 (SLL Scartel)^[1] 2008 ИОО «Yota Бел» ^[2]
Area served	Moscow, St. Petersburg, Astrahan, Kazan, Khabarovsk, Kovrov, Kostroma, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Murom, Naberezhnye Chelny, Novosibirsk, Obninsk, Orenburg, Samara, Sochi, Tomsk, Tula, Ufa, Vladivostok, Vladimir, Yoshkar-Ola^[3]
Key people	Igor Torgov
Owner	Telconet Capital Limited Partnership (74,9 %) Russian Technologies State Corporation (25,1 %, since 2008 ^[4])
Number of employees	1,200
Subsidiaries	SLL Scartel (Синамакс and Макмис owned by Scartel ^[5]) Scartel Starlab ^[6] More ^[6] ИОО «Yota Бел» (100%^[7]) Yota de Nicaragua (75%^[8])
Website	yota.ru (Russian), йота.рф (Russian)

Yota (Russian: Йота) is a Russian mobile broadband services provider and smartphone manufacturer.^[9] Yota is a trademark of Skartel LLC.

On May 9, 2012, Yota's WiMAX was replaced by its LTE network. By September 2012, 4G commercial maintenance networks were launched in Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Moscow, Sochi, Samara, Vladivostok, Ufa, Kazan, and St. Petersburg.

Garsdale Services Investment Ltd owns 100% of the Yota shares and 50% of the MegaFon shares. Garsdale itself is 82% controlled by AF Telecom, 13.5% by Telconet Capital, and 4.5% by the Russian Technologies State Corporation. Yota is rumored to be planning on relocating its headquarters from Russia to either Toronto or Waterloo, Ontario Canada ^[10]

History

In 2006 the co-owner of the St. Petersburg company Korus, Denis Sverdlov, and businessman Sergey Adonev established the first provider of WiMAX, a new data transfer technology. In 2006 WiMAX was rare and only existed in a handful of countries like the United States, India, China, Indonesia, and Taiwan. In fall 2008 Skartel was the first company in Russia to deploy WiMAX standard network in Moscow and St. Petersburg in a range of 2.5-2.7 GHz. In 2010 Yota announced its plans to launch LTE on its network. The first test start of the new standard network took place in Kazan on August 30, 2010. The subscribers gained access to the Internet at a rate of 20-30 Mbit/s. About 150 base stations have been installed in Kazan. The investments into the LTE network deployment constituted $20 million. The fourth generation LTE network, which was tested by the Yota provider in Kazan, has been switched off the next day. At that point, Yota had no interest to use a 4G standard network in a commercial or test mode. Today the users of Yota have access to LTE standard Internet services in nine cities of Russia. By 2014 Yota plans to launch 4G in 180 Russian cities.

Yota USB-Dongle for Mobile Internet Access

Long Term Evolution (LTE)

Officially, Novosibirsk was the first Russian city where the LTE network was deployed, commercially launched on December 22, 2011. Then this new format of communications was adopted in Krasnodar (April 29, 2012), Moscow (May 10, 2012), and Sochi (May 11, 2012). Samara was connected to LTE on May 23, 2013. And later on Ufa and St. Petersburg have also joined this service. LTE network works within a range of 2.5-2.7 GHz, which is one of the ranges, accepted as standard by the International Telecommunication Union. In Russia these frequencies have also been selected by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation for the 4th generation networks.

LTE standard can provide the speed of up to 100 Mbit/s, however Yota provides the speed, limited to 20 Mbit/s in order to prevent the network from overloading and to provide equal LTE access to all the users.

AF-Telecom (Megafon) and Skartel (Yota) concluded the contract on joint development of networks for the fourth generation LTE (Long Term Evolution) mobile communications in Russia based on a business model of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). The key idea of the contract is that Megafon has an opportunity to give a telecommunication service of fourth-generation LTE, using Yota equipment, whereas Yota can use Megafon's network infrastructure. The main objective of the alliance is to give the subscribers access to the newest technologies and services, to make them more accessible and attractive at the expense of increased efficiency in capital expenses to build LTE networks and to decrease operational costs. By the same principle Yota cooperates with Rostelecom under the same principle. On July 10, 2012, Megafon and Skartel shareholders declared the end of the transaction, under the results of which the property structure of both the operators is to be changed. The Garsdale Services (based in the British Virgin Islands) will be the owner of 50% plus one share of Megafon and 100% of the Skartel shares. Establishing a holding company helped accelerate the implementation of new technologies in Russia, reduce expenses for building of a LTE network together with the operational costs, reduced final costs of services and ultimately made them more accessible. One condition has been made for to the companies: to provide access to LTE-network for other companies on the model of MVNO—i.e., on equal terms.

Yota Devices

Yota HTC Handset

In July 2011 Yota presented a new family of devices compatible with Yota's 4G WiMAX network. The devices had simple names like "Yota One" and "Yota Many". Unlike previous models, they were designed by the company itself. Shaped like a "plain box", Yota Many is a portable WiFi hotspot device that is smaller than its predecessor.

Yota's primary device, the Modem Yota, operates on Yota's 4G LTE network and looks like a slightly larger and thicker version of the Yota One.

On December 12, 2012, Yota Devices announced the first "YotaPhone" prototype, a unique double-display smartphone. It has an 4.3-inch, HD LCD display on the front and an e-ink display on the back. The prototype runs version 4.2 of the Android operating system. Yota Devices released more information at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2013.^[11]

Yota Space Festival

Yota Space Festival logo

The communications process is very important for Yota, which helps it spread its philosophy. For this reason, since 2010 Yota has organized the largest noncommercial international festival of digital art Yota Space in Russia. At a press conference, festival organizers and artists invited from abroad underlined that the amount and quality of multimedia art was unprecedented for Russia. Not only did the festival manage to showcase valuable pieces of art, but it also succeeded in bringing the artists. The Yota Space Festival also has an ongoing educational program featuring presentations, seminars, and lectures for young video artists and designers.

YotaPhone II

References