OREANDA-NEWS. On 7 February 2008 was announced, that Sibirtelecom Open Joint Stock Company had made preliminary results of solution of technical issues for the year 2007. The highlight of the year was the completion of the projects with the federal status that are important for the company, the construction of common corporate multiservice network and the development of broad-band access to Internet.

In the previous year Sibirtelecom increased the volume of the basic production assets by 7 bln rubles. The Company dynamically constructed new communication objects and structures and upgraded the existing production assets in order to increase the range of services and to improve their quality. In 2007, Sibirtelecom invested 6.6 bln rubles in capital construction (without subsidiary business).

The completion of the 1st construction stage of multiservice corporate network that connected Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Tomsk, Altai and Gorno-Altai branches of the Company is among the biggest projects that Sibirtelecom realized in the previous year. In the year 2008 the project will be completed, and the remaining 6 branches of the Company will be connected to the corporate network. The multiservice networks of all branches of Sibirtelecom, integrated on the basis of own transport resources, will make it possible to optimize expenses for renting links from higher level operators and for the Internet traffic, as well as to provide own environment for the users to have access to the internal content (IP-television, etc.).

The development of the services of broad-band access to Internet under Webstream brand highlighted the year 2007. The Company strengthened its positions on this market by developing customer-access networks. Over 190 thousand DSL-ports were constructed, 1/3 of them was put into operation in Novosibirsk region and Krasnoyarsk Krai.

In 2007 Sibirtelecom implemented the largest projects with the federal status: “Education” and “Universal Service”. The “Education” project provided a high speed Internet access to more than 7,400 institutions of general education in Siberia within the period from September 2006 to August 31, 2007. In the course of the “Universal Service” project, 6.3 thousand public telephones were put into operation in the Siberian Federal District in 2007, which made it possible to provide connection to the most remote districts of Siberia. The Company installed 10.3 thousand public telephones in the two years of 2006-2007 within implementation of this project.

With the framework of further digitalization of Sibirtelecom network most of the capital investments were used for the construction and improvement of telecommunication objects. The Company put into service 350 thousand numbers of modern digital telephone exchanges, including 240 thousand numbers that replaced obsolete equipment. According to the results of the year, 5.4 thousand kilometers of fiber-optic communication links were constructed and put into operation.

Alexander Isaev, General Director of Sibirtelecom OJSC says: “I think we successfully carried out our plans this year. We have fulfilled the investment plan to commission capacities, to construct new communication objects and to improve the network, which allowed us to follow the strategic initiatives of the Company according to the plan and to provide our customers with high quality services. The business profile of Sibirtelecom as a provider of traditional telephony keeps changing to a provider of convergent services of voice communication, Internet access and data transmission”.

Plans for the year 2008 include large-scale technical transformations with the purpose to increase network digitization. The Company is going to replace about 360 thousand numbers of Automatic Switching Centres, which would be one of the largest improvements of the public network. That will allow to wide broadband internet access servicing geography and to vary the number of services. Sibirtelecom aims at further transformation of the business profile and at strengthening of Company’s positions on the prospective markets of new services and content.