By the end of this year, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) says it will have launched a LTE network in the 1800MHz band in Moscow, having received the necessary regulatory approvals, Telegeography.com writes on Nov 17. 2014. A report from Lenta.ru says that from next year, MTS plans to offerLTE-1800 services in the capital over a network totaling ‘several thousands’ of base stations, capable of providing downlink data transmission in at a speed of up to 100Mbps. Having already deployed 2600MHz LTE services, MTS is now using the lower band to reduce the number of base stations required to provide coverage in the city. In September 2014 the cellco introduced a testLTE-1800 network in Bashkiria. It currently holdsLTE-1800 licenses covering 21 Russian regions, including Moscow, St Petersburg with surrounding regions, Krasnodar Territory, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and the Kaliningrad region of the Republic of Adygea and Karelia, amongst others.