Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards reward the most innovative projects and initiatives undertaken by companies in the telecommunications industry.

Ms. Cynthia Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer of MTS Group, received the awards in London on September 9, 2008. She commented: “We would like to thank Global Telecoms Business for acknowledging MTS’ innovative solutions. Such recognition is a testament to our organizational development and evidence of leadership in our markets of Russia and the CIS.”

MTS received the award in the “Marketing strategy and service innovation” category for its customer-centric lifestyle segmentation. The company offers a broad range of innovative tariffs aimed at specific customer segments, which include among others youth, guest workers, women, families and small businesses. MTS has been very active in developing a segmented approach to marketing in order to attract a broad range of subscribers to its network – the largest in Russia and the CIS.

MTS also received the award in the “International mobile service innovation” category for a joint project with Atos Origin for Worldline global recharge service. MTS partnered with Atos Origin to enable customers to recharge their balance when traveling abroad through cross-border airtime transfers. The service can support both own top-up and third-party airtime recharge by a variety of payment means, including payments by using widespread prepaid vouchers from third-parties. The list of  participants in the project included such companies as Play (Poland), Vodafone (Egypt), Maxis (Malaysia), DTAC (Thailand) and StarHub (Singapore). The geography of the project will be constantly expanding as more operators from different countries join the list.