Rostelecom, Russia’s national long-distance telecommunications operator, is participating in Capacity Russia 2006 – the industry’s key wholesale telecoms forum, which is held on 2 – 3 October, 2006 (Radisson SAS Slavyanskaya Hotel, Moscow).

Capacity Russia 2006 is Capacity magazine’s 2^nd annual Russian wholesale telecommunications congress, with Rostelecom being its Gold sponsor for the second time.

This year, once again meting an evergrowing interest demonstrated by international operators to the Russian wholesale telecom marketplace, the conference features building successful partnerships in the domestic and international markets across Russia, Ukraine and CIS.

The event is attended by up to 200 strategic business decision-makers from carriers, operators and service providers from across Russia as well as Western, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia-Pacific.

At the keynote panel, Olga Rumyantseva, Director of Sales and Customer Service Department of Rostelecom, reported on the Company’s recent developments in the new regulatory environment.

In addition, Rostelecom represented the prospects of international cooperation in the frames of its exclusive offering - Europe-Asia transit (TEA) project, which continues to develop rapidly. During the year passed from Capacity Russia 2005, the Company launched two new fiber-optic lines constructed using DWDM equipment: terrestrial – from Blagoveshchensk (Russia) to Heihe (China) and undersea – from Kingisepp (Russia) to Kotka (Finland).

The Blagoveshchensk-Heihe fiber-optic line is the second broadband channel of Rostelecom, which connects Russia and China. This high-speed terrestrial cross-border link, interconnected Rostelecom’s network to the network of China Telecom, the leading Chinese carrier, ensures broadband traffic transmission from Asian countries to Europe through Rostelecom’s network.

To get another interconnection to the networks of Finland, besides the one with TeliSonera’s, the undersea fiber-optic line Kingisepp-Kotka was launched. It interconnects Rostelecom’s network to the network of Elisa – one more telecoms operator in Finland.

The new cross-border lines contribute to higher throughput capacity and reliability of Rostelecom’s network to both Europe and Asia, thus giving opportunity to increase quality of service, meeting different customer needs.