On May 16, 2007, a press conference was held at the Government of St. Petersburg dedicated to implementation of the “Program of Telecommunication Services Supply to St. Petersburg Residents for the years 2005-2007” ahead of schedule. The program was approved on March 4, 2005 at a meeting attended by L. D. Reiman, Russian Federation Minister of Information Technologies and Communications, and V. I. Matvienko, Governor of St. Petersburg (see Press Release of 04.03.2005).

The press conference was attended by:

-  Valentina I. Matvienko, Governor of St. Petersburg

-  Leonid D. Reiman, RF Minister of Information Technologies and Communications

-  Vladimir A. Akulich, General Manager, North-West Telecom OJSC.

The Governor of St. Petersburg and the Minister of Information Technologies and Communications noted the importance and uniqueness of the actions within the framework of the implemented Program, signed a symbolic Statement of implementation of the “Program of Telecommunication Services Supply to St. Petersburg Residents for the years 2005-2007” ahead of schedule, and sealed a symbolic “Register of applications for telephone installation in St. Petersburg in the years 1968-2006.”

In her speech, Mrs. Matvienko thanked Minister Reiman for attention paid to the city, for assistance in promotion of innovation projects related to telecommunication and computerization, and for support to the Program so socially important for the city. The Governor of the Northern Capital noted the symbolic aspect of the event held on the eve of a historic anniversary: it was 125 years ago, in 1882, that Russia’s first home telephones appeared simultaneously in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Mrs. Matvienko congratulated Petersburg’s communication community on the date, and thanked General Manager of North-West Telecom V. A. Akulich and all of the company’s employees for their active work to provide a broad range of up-to-date telecommunication services to St. Petersburg residents, noting the Company’s overall contribution to the development of the city as one of its largest taxpayers.

Mr. Reiman in his turn emphasized that St. Petersburg became Russia’s first city with the population exceeding 1,000,000 that has fully solved the telephone availability problem. This became possible in particular due to sizable, in excess of RUR 4 billion, funds invested in the updating of St. Petersburg telephone network. The Minister of Minister of Information Technologies and Communications emphasized that, despite the active development of mobile communication and other technologies, the home telephone remains in demand, and the telephone line is not merely a voice communication tool, being now a channel for provision of the full set of up-to-date multimedia services, the offer of which expands with every year. In this aspect too, St. Petersburg’s communicators are among the first.

During the press conference, Vladimir Akulich, General Manager of N.W.Telecom, informed that as a result of implementation of the Program’s provisions in 2005-2006, over 122,000 applications were satisfied in St. Petersburg, and the city queue for telephone installation that included 56,800 applications as of January 1, 2005 was eliminated. Starting from 2007, telephone installation in St. Petersburg is provided by the St. Petersburg Subsidiary of N.W.Telecom within 6 months from the application filing.

In his speech, Mr. Akulich emphasized that the Program implementation became an important landmark in the development of the city’s telecommunications not only because it helped to get rid of the queue, but also because great work was done during the Program implementation for the telephone network updating and digitization. This helped to create a multiservice communication network (MCN) in St. Petersburg, and was a prerequisite for successful development of up-to-date telecommunication services based on broadband access technologies in the Northern Capital.

During the conference, to demonstrate the abilities of the multiservice network and new telecommunication technologies, N.W.Telecom set up a session of direct video conference communication to one of the customer service centers of the St. Petersburg Subsidiary, so that the conference participants could communicate with the Company’s customers and personnel.