OREANDA-NEWS. On June 26, 2007 “COMSTAR - United TeleSystems” JSC (“Comstar”) (LSE: CMST) announced that its 55,73% owned subsidiary, Moscow City Telephone Network (“MGTS”), received preliminary approval from the Federal Service for Tariffs (FST) for the optimized structure of its combined tier of tariff plans for regulated voice services, reported the press-centre of  Comstar.

In line with MGTS’ proposal submitted to the FST in October 2006, the FST has preliminary approved an increase of the prepaid limit for the combined tariff for MGTS’ residential subscribers from 370 to 450 minutes. The combined tariff of RUR 229[1] covers the cost of the prepaid minutes, on top of which a price per minute of RUR 0,23 is charged to the subscriber.

Following a review process in December 2006, the FST approved a new tariff regime for MGTS’ residential subscribers that took effect from February 1, 2007. This set an unlimited tariff option of RUR 380. Customers could also choose a time-based tariff package for the price of RUR 125 plus RUR 0,28 per-minute, or a combined tariff of RUR 229 for 370 minutes inclusive plus RUR 0,23 per-minute above this limit.

The original per-minute price for the prepaid limit of the combined tariff plan, approved by the FST with effect from February 1, 2007, was RUR 0,28, which is the same price per minute as in the pure per-minute tariff, making the combined tariff plan less appealing to subscribers. Under the new combined tariff, subscribers will now receive a lower price per prepaid minute compared to per-minute tariff, improving the value of the proposition.

Sergey Pridantsev, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Our new combined tariff provides an attractive value-for-money proposition to our customers, and we are happy that the FST is supporting this initiative. We expect that a number of subscribers currently using the per-minute tariff will consider switching to the combined package. At the same time, many unlimited tariff subscribers like the plan not only because they use the phone a lot, but also because they prefer not having to worry about going over a defined prepaid limit.  We therefore expect that a significant portion of these customers will remain on the unlimited plan”.