Belarusian Telecommunications Network (BeST life:)), a mobile operator owned by Turkish telecoms company Turkcell (80%) and the government of the Republic of Belarus (20%), has announced that its in-deployment 4G mobile network now covers an additional eleven towns/cities, thanks to the construction of more than 163 base transceiver stations. BeST’s LTE network services – which are hosted by LTE infrastructure provider Belarusian Cloud Technologies (beCloud) which is responsible for rolling out a common 4G network in the Republic – are now available in the localities of Luban, Myadel, Staryye Dorogi, Volozhin, Logoysk, Krupki, Novogrudok, Voronovo, Ivye, Oshmyany and Dyatlovo.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, the government announced in February 2018 that it is considering selling its stake in life:). At a meeting on the prospects for the development of the telecommunications services market in the country, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko noted that the state is a minority shareholder in a venture that ‘needs support’, and hinted at selling off its holding. ‘We have more than one company [in the telecoms market], two of which are large and the third, [BeST] which asks for [government] support,’ he explained, going on to say that the government should consider ‘the privatisation of the several percent that are owned by the state’. At the same time, President Lukashenko drew attention to the fact that the privatisation process should proceed in accordance with the local law.
