The Moscow City Telephone Network is to introduce a new tariff for business users – for the first time fees will be based on traffic costs where previously, users paid a fixed monthly fee for local calls: the new tarriff is expected to be 0.04 roubles per minute; the Network’s domestic business is enormously unprofitable and the organisation has a debt of 329m roubles the price of installing a new phone line is 100 roubles, but the cost is 1,400 roubles and there is big shortage of free telephone numbers in the Russian capital and lines are bought at auction for tens of thousands of roubles; network assistant director N Savlyukov says a doubling of tariffs and the formalised auction of free telephone numbers is being considered – the Moscow telephone network has a limit of some 3.7m numbers.
