On November 16, 2009 North-West Telecom started full-scale operation of its Avangard TV service in the Republic of Komi. It is the fourth region serviced by the Company where the IPTV service has become available. By now, Avangard TV is already provided in St. Petersburg, Novgorod Oblast, and Kaliningrad Oblast. The number of users of this service exceeds 12,000.

North-West Telecom positions Avangard TV primarily as an extra service for users of the service of broadband Internet access under the Avangard brand, and is a set of interactive multimedia services provided on the IP technologies basis via broadband communication networks.

Avangard TV subscribers will get access to the following interactive television services:

- Watching of over 60 popular Russian and international TV channels in the digital format, and unique “niche” TV channels for narrow target audiences (“Hunting and Fishing”, “Country House”, “Drive”);

- “Video on demand” is a service enabling selection of films and telecasts out of the operator’s database for watching, and control their playback (stop the air, rewind and fast forward, and resume watching from the point of stop);

- “Network Personal Video Recorder”* is a service to save content in the network for subsequent individual watching, which enables recording of any telecast on air and watch as many times as desired at a convenient time, and then to delete it;

- Start Over* enables watching a program already on air even if it started long ago;

- Last X Days TV* enables watching a telecast that was on air some days ago.

Additional functions making the use of Avangard TV more comfortable are Electronic TV Guide (for access to a detailed and brief program for the current day or week, and for TV watching programming) and Parent Control (to restrict access to certain programs and set a restriction on the sum of orders for one-time services with the aid of the PIN code.)

According to Oleg Popov, Associate General Manager and Commercial Manager of N.W.Telecom, “IP TV has made assured steps from the Northern Capital to the Regions. We have been able to achieve this regional expansion primarily due to our ramified network infrastructure, which is our great competitive advantage. The plans of N.W.Telecom for the next year include further active promotion of the Avangard TV service, and the start of testing of the high definition TV (HDTV) service on the basis of the PON technology, which we are actively developing in St. Petersburg and are implementing in the regions."

For detailed information about the Avangard TV service, TV channels, extra services, and tariffs visit the product website www.avangard-tv.ru.

In December 2007 in St. Petersburg, N.W.Telecom announced the start of full-scale operation of the Avangard TV service. In April 2008, N.W.Telecom started full-scale operation of the Avangard TV service in Veliky Novgorod. In May 2009, the Avangard TV service was implemented in Kaliningrad. The Republic of Komi is the fourth region of the North-Western Federal District where N.W.Telecom offers its customers digital interactive television.

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* provided on TV channels where such service is authorized by the right holders.