In just eight months of operations in the city of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region MTS’ subscriber base has reached 469,000 customers, which represents a market share of approximately 27%, according to J’son & Partners, an independent consultancy. MTS operates in seven other regions of Russia’s North West district with a total subscriber base of around 69,200 people. In the majority of these regions services were launched during the current year. MTS also plans to launch networks in two further regions, Vologda and Yamal Nenetsk. The company will then be present in all the areas of the North West district, which has a total population of 14.6 million. Today, MTS services over 4.8 million people and its licence footprint covers a population of approximately 106 million people of which 10 million live in the neighbouring Belarus.