Moscow turns off Wi-Fi in land transport because of bad quality

2020: Moscow turns off Wi-Fi in land transport because of bad quality

Since March 1, 2020 in buses, electrobuss, trolleybuses and trams of Moscow Wi-Fi will be turned off. SUE Mosgortrans it intends to find the new contractor instead of NetByNet. It became known at the end of February of the 2020th.

The service does not meet user requirements, its action will be suspended" — told Kommersant in the press service "Mosgortrans.

Buses, electrobuss, trolleybuses and trams of Moscow Wi-Fi will be turned off

According to the representative of the enterprise, new requirements will be prepared, will create technical specifications for tender according to the results of poll of passengers. It is expected that Wi-Fi will appear again in the second half of the year 2020. The new contract can also cover commercial carriers, one of interlocutors of the newspaper believes.

Mosgortrans complained of communication quality in April, 2019 — his representatives sent the letter to NetByNet as which affirmed, affirmed that passengers are dissatisfied with communication quality, the entering and proceeding speeds do not correspond stated, and sometimes connection does not work at all.

According to Mosgortrans, the general speed of Wi-fi on all inside of the vehicle quite often appeared below the stated 10 Mbps, and the speed of connection of each subscriber did not reach 256 kbps provided by the agreement.

NetByNet, in turn, considers that they satisfied all terms of the contract. According to the company, in 2019 passengers of land transport used service of 1.7 billion times, all was transmitted 651 Tbyte of data through network. At the same time the average width of the channel on the user exceeded the range of 256 Kbps recorded in the agreement – 10 Mbit / c and was 13.9 Mbps.

We understood the decision of Mosgortrans to suspend provision of services of free Wi-Fi in land city transport and desire of the partner to analyze the telecommunication environment of the capital. For February 25 land and underground (subway) Moscow are completely equipped with high-quality network of the mobile Internet, its use grows from year to year — the CEO of NetByNet Andrey Batanov told TAdviser. — In this context the role of city Wi-Fi really should be rethought. We fulfilled all the contract obligations from Mosgortrans and provided all services in full. We equipped city land transport with the necessary equipment and unrolled Wi-Fi-network using technologies 3G and LTE.

As NetByNet and Mosgortrans already take different positions on service quality, the issue of contract cancelation, most likely, will be resolved in court, the lawyer of Forward Legal Lyudmila Lukyanova considers. At the same time, if it becomes clear that all this time of state unitary enterprise without any complaints accepted services and stages of the contract, it will be much more difficult to prove justification of claims, she warns.^[1]

2016: 8 thousand units of public transport are connected to Wi-fi network

At the beginning of 2016 the Company began implementation of the socially important project in Moscow and started Wi-fi network on city passenger transport. The contract is expected 5 years during which NETBYNET will provide 8000 buses, trolleybuses and trams SUE Mosgortrans plying both in the territory of Moscow and in the Moscow region, with the equipment for free access for passengers to the Internet. Project cost is 403 million rubles. By data for 2016 eight thousand units of public transport are connected to Wi-fi network.

2015: The contractor of the project on equipping of capital buses by access is determined by Wi-Fi

"Subsidiary" of MegaFon — Netbaynet — won an auction of Mosgortrans on equipment of capital buses access on Wi-Fi. MegaFon was the only competitor of Netbaynet in an auction, competitors considered tender conditions non-market. The chief information officer of Mosgortrans is the brother of one of top managers of MegaFon^[2].

The first routes will be equipped with access on Wi-Fi in February, 2016. At the same time on-line through Wi-Fi will be able to go 15-20 passengers. Service for them will be free.

Testing of Internet access from public transport began in 2011. All three capital mobile operators — MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom took part in it (a trademark Beeline). Will implement the present project Netbaynet (NBN) — the operator of fixed connection belonging to MegaFon.

"Providing passenger city land transport with reliable Internet access on Wi-Fi allows to increase comfort of time spent on the way that is especially valuable on the long routes connecting dormitory areas and suburbs with the main traffic intersections — the CEO of NBN Andrey Batanov said. — The router which we install on the vehicle will provide speed to 10 Mbps throughout all section of following of a route".

Added to NBN that terms of the contract with Mosgortrans allow the operator to earn as well from advertizing demonstration to subscribers (as it is done by Maxima Telecom company in the capital subway), but there are no specific plans in this respect yet.

MegaFon competed with itself

According to documentation placed on the portal of state procurements, NBN at the end of 2015 won the corresponding open auction of Mosgortrans. At the starting price of the contract in 411 million rubles NBN won it for 403 million rubles. The operator will have to equip with routers for Wi-Fi 8 thousand transport land means.

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