Russia Activates First Commercial 5G in 16 Cities on Military-Spared Spectrum

Security services steering civilian tech is nothing new: in 1934 the Soviet Union’s People’s Commissariat of Communications centralised radio frequencies for ‘defence needs,’ slowing mass adoption—much like today’s FSB hold on mid-band 5G. The detour onto a bespoke 4.6-5 GHz band recalls China’s TD-SCDMA 3G experiment in 2008, which achieved sovereignty but limited handset compatibility. Long-term, Russia is reinforcing a century-old pattern of prioritising strategic control over global interoperability—from Gosplan’s telegraph monopoly in the 1920s to the 2019 “sovereign internet” law. If domestic equipment and isolated spectrum mature, Moscow could seed a self-reliant telecom ecosystem; if not, it risks repeating the fate of the Soviet ‘Sprint’ computer initiative (abandoned 1985) and drifting further from worldwide technology cycles over the next hundred years.