Russian mobile operator MTS has started deploying LTE small cells in major cities across the country, Telecompaper.com reports on Oct 16, 2014. The project will run until the end of 2016, starting in Moscow and St Petersburg. Later, it will extend to the cities of Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny-Novgorod and Kazan. Small cells working on the 2,600 MHz band are expected to cover a radius of 100-150 meters each. The equipment will be connected to the MTS fiber optic network and will enable it to reduce the workload of its base stations. A pilot project was carried out in the South-Western part of the city of Moscow earlier this year. Over 200 small cells from Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia were set up there, and equipment from NEC was used under a pilot project in St Petersburg.