Some Russian highways will ‘never’ have mobile coverage due to ‘closed zones,’ says road agency head

Meduza.io

Some sections of Russian highways will never have mobile coverage, according to Vyacheslav Petushenko, the head of the state-owned road company Avtodor, Kommersant reported. Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Petushenko said the lack of service in certain areas is due to the roads passing through “closed zones.”

“There are some places where service simply will never exist,” he said during a panel on the future of autonomous vehicles on Russia’s federal highways. “Not because the Digital Ministry is doing a poor job, but because there are closed-off zones. There just won’t be any connection there.”

Petushenko did not clarify what kind of “closed zones” he was referring to, but cited certain stretches of the M-11 highway — which links Moscow and St. Petersburg — where the company attempted to establish service but “nothing worked out.”

According to Kommersant, the main obstacle to expanding coverage on federal highways is the difficulty of connecting telecom infrastructure to power. The Digital Development Ministry explained that “a lack of electricity makes installing and connecting base stations either economically unfeasible or simply impossible.”

The ministry added that it is working with the Energy Ministry to explore ways to “optimize” power grid connections and is in talks with regional authorities about providing subsidies from local budgets to help link telecom infrastructure to electricity.

A bill submitted to the State Duma would allow communication lines and antenna towers to be built within highway right-of-way zones. As Kommersant notes, mobile operators are frequently denied permission to install infrastructure in such areas. The Digital Development Ministry said the legislation is now being prepared for a second reading.

In 2021, the Russian government required telecom operators to provide LTE coverage on all federal highways within a decade as a condition for accessing the necessary frequencies. But the deadline for that requirement has been pushed back repeatedly. At the end of 2023, while drafting a national strategy for developing road tourism, the Economic Development Ministry acknowledged that many highways still suffer from poor service — or none at all.