OREANDA-NEWS. Ukrtelecom's deputy Board Chairman, Yevhen Shapovalov, disclosed at a press conference on September 27 that Ukrtelecom intends to launch its 3G mobile communication services (UMTS standard) in November, Milennium Capital (MC), a finance services provider, informs with reference to Ukretelecom.  Shapovalov also announced that Ukrtelecom planned to introduce 3G in March 2007, but problems with purchasing equipment led to the delay. The business roll-out will first start in Kyiv and then continue in five other cities with more than 1 mln people - Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa, Lvov, Kharkov and Donetsk and in 12 regions.

Additionally, Ukrtelecom has a GSM roaming agreement with Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS, trademark Beeline), which has a network that covers an area on which more than 86% of Ukraine's population live. Ukrtelecom announced in December 2006 an intention to attract 500,000 mobile subscribers by the end of 2007.

This announcement has been long awaited by market observers and is very important for Ukrtelecom. In the opinion of MC's experts, after recent correction this announcement could be the trigger to drive Ukrtelecom's stock quotes up in the near future.Still, privatization of Ukrtelecom is highly dependent on the political situation. "President Viktor Yushchenko and opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko have announced several times that they would like to speed up the privatization and organize a transparent tender for strategic international investors. If the probability of a change in government increases after the elections this would be an additional trigger for Ukrtelecom's stock price," stressed the analysts.