Background

Mongolia is a country with a large geographic area and is home to 3 million people roughly 850,000 families and an average of 1.9 person per km2. 25% of the population are mainly concentrated in the capital city Ulaanbaatar, with the rest of the population mostly nomadic and widely scattered. The home broadband penetration is low, and 700,000 out of 850,000 families do not have broadband access.

Vision of Unitel

As a leading operator in Mongolia, Unitel prepares for future market demands in terms of exploring the huge potential for internet & broadband services, including multimedia entertainment, tele-education, tele-medicine, video surveillance, smart agriculture, etc. These are all considered to be very important stepping stones for "Ger Internet" (Unitel's long term ICT plan for the country). Wireless technology, especially LTE is perceived as an optimal tool to improve broadband penetration, benefiting from enhanced performance and flexible easy deployment.

Network & Evolution

Home broadband service needs larger network capacity compared to smartphone business. Unitel's typical WBB package offers 30 GB per month, which is roughly a 20-fold increase in data consumed by a regular smartphone. Unitel always thinks and takes action one step ahead before actual events occur. In October 2017, Unitel obtained 40 MHz TDD bandwidth on 2.3 GHz. This band was then selected as the dedicated band to provide home broadband services. The 40 MHz TDD has much better capability to support the high broadband access speed for "Ger Internet". For the remaining coverage that has not been covered by 2.3 GHz LTE, the load will camp on the 700 MHz band. In the next step, Unitel will keep developing the business of home wireless broadband, and start to consider obtaining more bandwidth e.g. another 40 MHz on 2.3 GHz, 2.6 GHz, or even3.5 GHz to face the challenge of new demands for network capacity.

Since the launch of "Ger Internet" in January 2017, over 50,000 households, 200,000 individuals and 1,200 businesses have been adopting this technology for network connections. Internet access in rural areas allows access to remote education, critical news updates, market information and most importantly, connection to the world platform. This helps create new opportunities that once were considered to be unimaginable.

Remarks of CEO of Unitel Mr. Enkhbat.D Dorjpalam

Unitel is a leading telecom operator and a provider of integrated ICT solutions and content in Mongolia. Our goal and vision is to improve the lives of Mongolians with the help of technology. "Ger Internet" is a result of our efforts in this regards. With the continuing help and support of our partners and the implementation of the latest solutions such as WTTx, we are confident that very son even the remotest corner of Mongolia will no longer seem remote, but will be connected to anywhere in the world.