Russian telecom is reaching a new level — MTS has agreed to cooperate with the world's largest operator, China Mobile, which has more than a billion subscribers.
The Chinese side will conduct a full audit of the MTS infrastructure and propose a modernization plan for the next few years. This is not just about "advice" — autonomous network technologies with AI elements will be put into action.
Such systems can predict failures, find problems, and fix them without human intervention. At the same time, they optimize energy consumption and automate the launch of services for business.
According to estimates, this could reduce network maintenance costs by almost half and significantly improve the quality of communication.
A separate emphasis is placed on preparing for 5G. China Mobile already has extensive experience in deploying such networks, including a full standalone format (without being tied to 4G), and will now share this experience with MTS.
In fact, the operator is trying to jump through stages of development and reduce the gap with countries where 5G has been operating for a long time, and 6G is on the horizon.
This is not the first time the Chinese have entered the Russian market: they have previously launched joint projects with Beeline and worked on routing Internet traffic between Russia and China.
Now it's MTS's turn — and the bet is clearly on networks that can manage themselves.
