Yota signs major 4G deal

Here’s an update on Yota, the company I wrote about for GlobalPost’s special report on Innovation.

One day after the story ran, Yota announced a deal with Russia’s telecoms giants (Beeline, Megafon, MTS and Rostelekom) that will see Yota provide them all their 4G needs. (Would’ve been nice to know that before I wrote the story, when the company was little more than a boutique firm struggling to provide something new, but that’s life.)

“The deal will see Yota become the 4G network provider for the Russian telecoms market and guarantee the roll-out of its LTE network to cover 180 cities with a total population of more than 70 million citizens by 2014,” Yota said in a statement today. UK blog TechDigest said the deal “is big news because it means that Russia will effectively become the first country in the world to have blanket 4G coverage.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the company’s office today to bless the deal (which gives the whole thing a sense of business-as-usual Russian style). And it’s strange that it was Putin who blessed it rather then President Dmitry Medvedev, who has made “modernization” and “innovation” the catchwords of his presidency.