Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co, 3M, has signed a distributor agreement with Moscow-based ATD. ATD says it has many customers in high places, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, Central Bank of Uzbekistan, and also state structures and banks throughout Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Unisys Corp says it doubled total turnover in Russia in 1995, and says a major advertising campaign to increase awareness of the Unisys brand name is starting this month. It says the Unisys Moscow office now employs a total of 120 people.

Parus, a Russian firm doing software for public sector finance and management applications, celebrated its 5,000th customer in 1995. These now include the Ministry of Finance, Tax Inspection Board, the General Public Prosecutor’s Office, Arbitrary Court, many educational, cultural and health care establishments. Sales last year were $70m.

Uninterruptible power supply firm BestPower Technology Inc has signed a distribution agreement with Moscow integrator and distributor Lanit. BestPower plans to employ several Russian staff in Moscow during the first quarter of 1996, and it later intends to organize a full service center there.

The Apple Computer Inc distributor in Russia, Apple Computer CIS, has opened an office in St Petersburg. It has also recently set up its own World Wide Web server.

As part of its plan to upgrade the Iskra-2 network, Moscow based ASVT says it will be able to add 100,000 new users to its network. Iskra-2 is the former party telephone network used by voice and data service providers to provide extra capacity or access numbers for their networks. It is primarily a Moscow network though it does have connections to other Russian and CIS cities. In 1995 Iskra-2 effectively reached full capacity, hence the upgrade.

Moscow City Telephone Network has given Siemens AG an order worth $34.5m for the installation of 12 EWSD digital city telephone exchanges. The new exchanges have a capacity of 500,000 lines and should come into service between 1996 and 1999. Siemens is to provide Moscow City Telephone with an eight-year credit line to enable it to buy the equipment.

A/O Alcatel DS, a subsidiary of Alcatel NV in Russia, has signed an agreement with Lensvyaz of St Petersburg, a communications enterprise, covering the construction and operation of a fiber optic link between St Petersburg and Gatchina in the region. The 622Mbps line will cost about $345,350.

Ekaterinburg-based Uralvestkom has started operating a $7m NMT- 450 cellular telephone network in the city with initial capacity of 1,000 users. Uralvestkom is the eighth cellular operator created by TDC in Russia and says it has plans to create cellular networks in five more regions during 1996.

The Latvian Post Office and Finnish Post Administration have created a joint venture called Latvijas Elektroniska Pasta in Riga to provide electronic mail services in the Baltic Republic to help large Latvian companies which send large number of invoices. The utilities Lattelekom, telephone, Latenergo, electricity, and Latvijas Gaze, for gas, will be Latvijas Elektroniska’s main customers. Lattelekom estimates that the electronic mail net will save it in the region of $182,000 per year.

Sweden’s L M Ericsson Telefon AB has opened a training center in Moscow at the Moscow Engineering Communications and Information Technology University. The center will help train engineers in the use of cellular communications equipment, management of communications businesses, and the operation of power supply and telephone switch equipment.

And during 1996, L M Ericsson Telefon AB will supply a 50,000- line AXE-10 switch to Ufa, Bashkortostan, under a $10m contract with the local phone company. Ericsson says it has also supplied equipment for the $3.1m regional NMT-450 cellular network which consists of six base stations and was built under a contract between Ericsson and A/O Cellular Communications of Bashkortostan.

SFMT-Krasnodar, a joint

venture between US-owned Global Telesystems Group Inc and the local communications enterprise, Kubanelektrosvyaz, has begun operating a satellite communications venture in the Russian city of Krasnodar. Direct investment by Global Telesystems in the venture totaled $1.2m. Krasnodar is the fifth Russian city to become a regional satellite node for Global Telesystems.

Two groups of companies are taking part in a tender for the creation of a cellular network staged by the Ministry of Communications & Informatics of Moldova. One group includes two Moldovan companies, Telecom and Exiton-fin, and the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Co. Its opponent is a consortium of Israel’s Bezeq International Ventures Ltd and Motorola Inc of the US. The winner, to be announced on April 15, will form a joint venture with Moldtelecom and the Republican Radio & Television Center to construct a nationwide cellular telephone network.

The number of users of the Beeline AMPS 800MHz cellular communication network in Moscow in October 1995 was 15,000, an increase of 5,000 from June. Having completed installation of the extra capacity, it says it no longer has a waiting list and is adding new subscribers at a rate of over 800 per month. At present, Beeline has 22 base-stations in Moscow with nine in the Moscow region.

Power supply vendor Fiskars Power Systems has signed a dealer agreement with Moscow-based A/O Compulink. Fiskars says that Russia currently accounts for 1.5% of the company’s European sales with American Power Conversion Inc still dominating the Russian Uninterruptible Power Supply market.