OREANDA-NEWS. On 22 April 2008 was announced, that Alexey Goncharuk, First Vice-President of JSC Comstar-UTS, participated in the awards ceremony of the all-Russia "Transparent Line" competition for the best coverage in mass media of telecommunication issues.

The competition is staged annually jointly by Ministry for IT and Telecommunications of the Russian Federation and MediaUnion, the national public organization of mass media workers with a support of big-timers in telecommunications and IT such as OJSC Svyazinvest,  JSC Comstar-UTS and CJSC TransTeleCom. Its mission is to honor outstanding creative efforts of journalists and mass media, reporting on telecommunications, and boost public awareness of progress ongoing in  the industry.

Applications were submitted by mass media from Moscow, Perm, Astrakhan, Ulan-Ude, Tomsk, Samara, Omsk, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Chelyabinsk, Vladivostok, Ekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and other cities in 18 regions all over the country. The competition gathered journalists of federal and regional mass media like Expert, SmartMoney magazines, Kommersant, Vedomosti newspapers, RBC Daily and Bussines&FM, RBC-TV, AEI PRIME-TASS, Business FM radio, Vzglyad.ru Internet edition, Ural-Inform TV media holding, Regions-Tyumen, VGTRK, RIA Sakhalin-Kurile,  Vostok-Media and NewsLab internet portals, Gorod N (Rostov-on-Don), Vecherny Chelyabinsk newspapers, RadioSibir and others. Journalists submitted to a competent jury panel consisting of leading  experts in telecommunications and media industry over 220 works in several categories. An independent count committee determined the winners by the highest average score of the points given by all jury members who judged every submitted work.

The awards ceremony of the competition was held on April 17, 2008 in Moscow as part of the third International "LINE" Forum: "Development of external and internal communications in the Field of IT and Telecommunications". Led by jury co-chairs Leonid Reyman, RF Minister of IT and Communications, and Alexander Lyubimov, President of MediaUnion, the ceremony was also attended by heads of companies partnering the competition, including Alexey Goncharuk First VP of JSC Comstar-UTS. Jointly with Andrey Bystritsky, Chairman of VGTRK (all-Russia State TV and Radio Company) he handed a prize in the category Radio to KTIP AVTOVAZ (Togliatti) for a series of reports on the prospects of digital TV and radio broadcasting  in Russia. 

In other categories the winners were respectively: Printed Media – Alexey Boyarsky from Kommersant-Money magazine; Television – Elena Medvedeva  from  Urals-Inform TV; Internet Media – Natalia Zhogova from Vzglyad.ru; Specialized Media  – Lavrenty Lishin from Izdatelstvo 625. A special award For Professional Contribution into Telecom Journalism was given to Igor Agapov, editor of AEI PRIME TASS and director of  Business. IT. Telecommunications edition and a prize in special category  For Constructive Criticism to  Sergey Sidorov from  RBC -TV,  CNews: Tomorrow’s Technologies program.