MANAGUA, Nicaragua, December 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Russia's Yota, the mobile services developer and provider and one of the world's leaders in Mobile WiMAX (4G) technology, has announced the test run of the mobile broadband 4th-generation Internet access network in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. The Yota network was rolled out in record time - in three months since the beginning of construction.

During the press conference attended by representatives of WiMAX Forum, Intel and Samsung, the strategic partners of Yota, journalists were told about the project and its perspectives in details.

Ricardo Olarte, Northern Cone General Manager of Intel, said that the broadband penetration in Latin America is very low, and is the reason why the initiative taken by Nicaragua will allow a significant leap in the adoption of new technologies placing the country at the forefront and generating a positive effect in people and businesses to improve the competitiveness ofit.

In July 2009, the public international tender for 2.5-2.7 GHz spectrum was announced in order to provide the whole territory of Nicaragua with communications services based upon the Mobile WiMAX standard. Yota became the winner of the tender. The implementation of this project, which is basically a rapid transition from dial-up and scarce fixed-line communications to 4G technology, will pave the way in a very short time for achieving meaningful social effects in Nicaragua, said Dr. Mo Shakouri, Vice President and board member of WiMAX Forum.

Yota will start to operation in Nicaragua with its wireless broadband Internet access service. Later the company plans to increase the number of services and to concentrate on the high-quality voice services demanded in the market. The record time of deployment of the network in Nicaragua shows that Yota has accumulated the strong expertise and has created the proven network infrastructure based on Samsung equipment. All these issues allow Yota to deployment networks in any country in the world extremely fast, - commented Doctor Song, Samsung Electronics

Yota services, developed during Yota's Russian project, and several types of end-user equipment will be available to subscribers, both to end-users and companies: USB modems, routers. The stationary VoIP device developed specially for Nicaragua, as well as the line of inexpensive netbooks with embedded Intel(R) WiMAX/WiFi module from the world's leading producers will be launched in the market of the country.

These devices are scheduled for sale next spring when everyone will be allowed free use of the Yota services before commercial use of the network begins in mid-2010.

We see great potential in our project in Nicaragua. The demand for communications services in this country is enormous. According to recent studies, the country cries out for telephony and for at least 300,000 new Internet connections, - says Yegor Ivanov, the vice president of business development at Yota. - Aside from Nicaragua, Yota includes Latin America, the CIS, as well as a series of countries in Asia and Africa, a total of 75 nations, into its global expansion plan. Currently, Yota manages more than USD 500mn of investment funds allocated for the international expansion in 2009. The company plans to raise the volume of investments to USD 1.5bn by the end of 2010.

About Yota

Yota is the developer and supplier of innovative mobile services. Yota is one of the world's leaders in 4G technologies development and networks deployment. The company provides fast mobile Internet access and a set of services based upon its network.

Yota has begun providing commercial 4G network service in Russia since June 2009, and reached the break-even point this October, less than in five months. In the first half of October, the subscriber base of the company surpassed 200,000 active users at a rate of 2,500 new clients a day.

Yota offers a set of unique mobile services that utilize the capabilities of the fast wireless Internet access: VoIP, mobile television, video content delivery, access to the music catalog with hundreds of thousands of records from world's leading record labels and many others.

Yota is a member of the international WiMAX Forum association which comprises the world-leading 4G technology vendors and service providers.

http://www.yota.ru/en, http://www.yota.ru/es

Contacts for the media: Natalya Tsarevskaya-Dyakina Yota, PR director +7-495-926-7585 pr@yotateam.ru

SOURCE: Yota

CONTACT: Contacts for the media: Natalya Tsarevskaya-Dyakina, Yota, PRdirector, +7-495-926-7585, pr@yotateam.ru