Yota (Scartel) has disabled the first LTE network in Russia LTE, 3 days after it's launch in Kazan. Scartel General Director, Denis Sverdlov said the company shut off network for engineering works.

Yota has not provided any further details but expects to be able to run the test network and commercial operation as soon as Russian regulator allows it.

Since declaration of its intention to switch from WiMAX to LTE in May, Yota is facing a bumpy ride. In June Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor announced that Yota's licence was issued for the provision of WiMAX services and licence did not include an exact definition of the technology permitted.

However In July, Roskomnadzor announced that Yota can use their existing radio frequencies for deploying LTE networks. Later Russian regulator Roskomnadzor revoked permission to use some of the frequencies issued to Scartel to build LTE network reportedly due to violation of the law. Regulator had banned a strip of 20-30 MHz allocated to Yota in the range of 2.5-2.7 GHz in 170 major cities of Russia.

However Yota's plan on introduction of 4G remained unchanged and Scartel launched a LTE network on 30th August. It has 150 base stations in the frequency band 2,5-2,7 GHz. Total investment in this project amounted to about $ 20 million.

It appears that Russia has to wait more for it's first comercial network.