OREANDA-NEWS. January 12, 2008. VolgaTelecom’s collective is awarded Certificate of honor of the Ministry of IT and Communications of the Russian Federation for substantial contribution to the realization of priority national project “Education”, the company's press service reported.

By September 1, 2007 the Company had ensured Internet access to 8, 334 educational institutions of the Volga Federal district. So, VolgaTelecom ahead of schedule and in full has fulfilled the contractual provisions with OJSC RTComm.RU to connect the schools to the Internet.

The program of providing Internet access to educational institutions was realized within priority national project “Education” carried out by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in association with the Ministry of IT and Communications of the Russian Federation. During 2006-2007 52 940 educational institutions of the Russian Federation had got the capability to connect to the Internet. The objective of the project is to provide the students from various regions with equal rights to access information-reference resources and educational programs, which will allow for providing quality and availability of education and so putting the education process to a new level. The schools were connected to the Internet within the fulfillment of provisions of the contract concluded with RTComm.RU to provide the services of arranging communication channels to educational institutions at the rate of at least 128 Kbps.

This large-scale project has been implemented by VolgaTelecom in less than a year and required heavy workload given that about 70% of the total number of schools to be connected to the Internet are located in rural areas. So, at the sites where it was required analog data transfer systems were replaced with digital ones; and in cases when the construction of line structures was impossible or was related to substantial material costs radio electronic systems were applied.

"The collective satisfyingly received the award of the Ministry of IT and Communications of the Russian Federation," said Sergey Omelchenko, VolgaTelecom General Director.  "Participation in realization of priority national project “Education” has become one more important phase of the Company’s activities consistently pursuing the policy of socially responsible business. The activities within the project have allowed for solving the main task: to ensure Internet access to educational institutions of the Volga Federal district, which is particularly important for rural schools which had got the capabilities to use Internet resources and to raise the level of educational process. Concurrently, VolgaTelecom has solved a number of tasks of improving its infrastructure which is in line with the Company’s strategy of priority development of high-tech services, and of Internet wideband access in particular."