The system will be used for research purposes as well as to teach undergraduate, graduate, PhD students practical aspects of operating mobile communication networks, creating and implementing various applications and enhance their knowledge to graduate from the University as fully skilled professionals. The students will be able to study mobile communication components, mobile traffic and data management, related software and hardware technologies, mobile user services and applications.

Oguz Memiguven, CEO of UCell, said: “As one of the leading educational institutions, Tashkent University of Information Technologies plays an important role in the development of telecommunications in Uzbekistan. UCell is committed to supporting research and innovation in the University. We know that this laboratory will add value to the students’ research work by allowing them to implement and test their new ideas in the laboratory environment.”

The UCell donation consists of a Mobile Switching Center (MSC), a Home Location Register (HLR), a Base Station Controller (BSC), a Transcoder of a GPRS Support Node (SGSN), a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and other supplementary equipment, which establishes a fully functional, small GSM system.

The rapid progress of the mobile communication field has created a need for new techniques and solutions, knowledgeable professionals to create and implement them, and courses to teach the theory and technologies. Now not only the students receive theoretical lectures about how the system works with details of all its components, they have the chance to do some practical laboratory work on the system with real equipment installed by UCell.

Tashkent University of Information Technologies is a leading IT university in Central Asia. It provides graduates with professional and technical skills and a strong science background in IT field.

Coscom was founded in 1996. From June 2008, the company began rendering services of mobile communication under the UCell trademark. The company’s subscriber base exceeded 5 million as per October 2009 (according to the subscribers reporting policy of Uzbekistan).

UCell is part of TeliaSonera, Europe’s 7th largest telecommunication operator in terms of market value at year-end 2008. In the emerging markets of Eurasia, TeliaSonera has majority holdings in leading mobile operators of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Nepal and Cambodia. TeliaSonera is also a minority owner of MegaFon in Russia and Turkcell in Turkey.