On January 21, 2010, a meeting was held in Murmansk between Murmansk Region Governor Dmitry Vladimirovich Dmitriyenko and NWT General Manager Vladimir Aleksandrovich Akulich, at which the revised* Interaction and Cooperation Agreement between the Murmansk Region Government and North-West Telecom was signed and outlooks for the development of telecommunications in the region were considered.

The subject of this Agreement is cooperation between the parties in creating and developing telecommunication networks in the region and satisfying to the maximum extent the Murmansk Region residents’ demand for communication services. The most important areas of cooperation between the Murmansk Region Government and North-West Telecom under the Agreement are as follows:

- Implementation of state, socially importa nt programs and projects for the development of telecommunication networks and services in the Murmansk Region;

- Development of the telecommunication infrastructure in the Murmansk Region to form a unified information and telecommunication space in Russia ;

- Introduction of new technologies, communication services and construction of multi-service communication networks in the Murmansk Region ;

- Ensuring the social orientation of decisions and actions in the telecommunications sphere in the Murmansk Region ;

- Preservation of NWT’s existing communications lines and constructions in accordance with the “Rules for Guarding Communications Lines and Constructions in the Russian Federation”.

Over the 7 years since its formation, NWT has invested more than 2.6 billion rubles for developing and upgrading the communications networks in the Murmansk Region. Optical fiber communications lines are under active construction in the Region. By the signing date of the Agreement, their length exceeded 1.5 thousand km. The telephone network digitalization level is 82% for the Murmansk Branch on the whole and 93% in the city of Murmansk. The broadband Internet access service provided by NWT has been actively developing in the recent years. At present, the installed capacity of the broadband access network in the Murmansk Region is nearly 110 thousand xDSL-ports. The total number of subscribers for the broadband Internet access service is over 80 thousand.

North-West Telecom pays much attention to the social responsibility of business, takes an active part in the implementation of socially important projects in the Kola Peninsula. Thus, 229 educational institutions were connected to the Internet in the course of implementation of the Education national project in the Murmansk Region in 2006-2007. 178 multi-service payphones were installed in the Region in 2007-2008, including in remote hard-to-reach communities.

As NWT General Manager V.A. Akulich pointed out at the meeting, “the cooperation under the new Agreement will enable us to continue the work for improving IT facilities and further developing telecommunications in a northern region of the North-West Federal District. In 2010, we will invest actively in the transportation infrastructure and new technologies, so that the up-to-date services become available in the remotest communities in the region. We are planning to start the implementation of innovation projects for the construction of passive optical networks (PON) “Optics to every home” and the next-generation network NGN in Murmansk, which on the basis of the supporting IP-network will ensure the integration of voice, data and multimedia transmission services. Next year, the investments in the Murmansk Region will amount to about 400 million rubles”.

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* The first Cooperation Agreement was signed by the heads of NWT and the Murmansk Region Government on November 11, 2004.