On June 21, 2007, on the eve of solemn celebration of the 125th anniversary of telephone communication in St. Petersburg, the 100,000th user connected to the Avangard service in the Northern Capital was congratulated at North-West Telecom. This user was Denis Artyukhov, a traffic control inspector. Shamil Syabitov, director of the Commercial Telecommunication Center, St. Petersburg Subsidiary of N.W.Telecom, congratulated and awarded prizes to the lucky subscriber. The 100,000th user received a notebook and free use of the Avangard service, at the 220K rate, for one year.

Avangard is a broadband Internet access service based on the ADSL technology and oriented at individual users. The connection history shows that the service is highly demanded by the target market. The service was first presented at the Norwecom exhibition in February 2006, and is developing at progressing rates. The Petersburg Subsidiary of North-West Telecom connected its 10,000th user in June 2006, and its 50,000 user, as soon after as in December. In one year, the number of Avangard service users in St. Petersburg increased tenfold.

Currently, N.W.Telecom offers the broadband Internet access service in all oblasts and republics of the North-West. The total number of Avangard service users in the North-Western Federal District exceeds 125,000 as of this day.

The advantages of the Avangard service are an unoccupied telephone line, broad coverage area, variety of tariff plans, and availability of extra services and up-to-date telecommunication services via a usual telephone line. Such extra features as Web Games,  My Photos,  My Files, and My Journal, have already become popular with the Avangard users in St. Petersburg.

In the nearest future, the Avangard users will be offered Avangard TV (IP TV) services: digital television, on-call video, and web video recorder, which are currently under pilot operation.

North-West Telecom users may get full information on the broadband Internet access service under the Avangard trademark on the service’s special website at www.avangard-dsl.ru, or by the service users support telephones of their respective region.