Sprint International Inc and Moscow-based Central Telegraph’s Sprint Networks joint venture says its Moscow and St Petersburg-based users will be able to use Frame Relay this year: at least another 10 cities across Russia will get access to Frame Relay by the autumn; the company said the technology should help it increase its customers base from the current 10,000 to 15,000 this year; at the moment Sprint estimates it has 65% of the data communications market in Russia.
Eastern Europe is now Motorola Inc’s fastest growing developing paging market: the company has a goal of 5% pager penetration in five years and it estimates that it has sold between 15,000 to 20,000 units in East Europe and the former Soviet Union to 50 operators, and claims about 70% of this market.
France Telecom has purchased an 11% stake in Mobile Tele Systems the Moscow Groupe Speciale Mobile digital cellular operator from Deutsche Telekom AG: the other stakeholders the joint venture company are now DeTeMobil, 27%; the Moscow Local Telephone Network, 20%; Siemens AG with 10%; US company TDSR, 5%; and Russians ASVT, 19%; CST, 3%; & M-Bell, 5%.
Alcatel NV’s LenBell joint venture has sold a System 12 10,000-line digital exchange to the city of Voronezh in the Black Earth Region of southern Russia: the exchange was officially opened on December 21; the purchase of equipment was agreed between A/O VoronezhSviasInform and LenBell, and financing for the exchange was raised by individuals and enterprises in the northern district of Voronezh; LenBell is a joint venture between Alcatel’s Belgian subsidiary Alcatel Bell, Fonds Nieuw Europa, also of Belgium, Nordex AG of Austria, and A/O Telekom and NIIETU of Russia.
Orenburg oil and gas distribution company has contracted Alcatel BV to build a mobile system running along its pipelines: the system, called Digicom-7, will cover one third of the Orenburg region and a similar project is scheduled for the Tyumen region.
LVS Corp has signed an agreement with Motorola Inc’s Motorola UDS to become the only distributor of its modems in Russia, but the modems have to be certified by the Russian Ministry of communication.
Moscow-based Cognitive Technologies says it has completed development of the StockTiger optical recognition system used to read information on privatisation vouchers and share certificates: Gasprombank suggested the idea.
In an attempt to unify telecommunications operators, the Russian Ministry of Communications has founded two organisations: Regional Transit Telecom will co-ordinate efforts of federal cellular network operators throughout Russia to help them provide inter-regional and international roaming; and the Association for Document Telecommunications will work on unifying the technical systems implemented by the data communications service providers, with a view to improving interconnectivity.
