OREANDA-NEWS. On 29 May 2008 was announced, that fourth annual conference "Wire Communications: Tendencies and Perspectives" organized by Vedomosti business newspaper with the support of COMSTAR-United TeleSystems took place in Moscow. Top managers of Group of companies COMSTAR-UTS took an active part in the event.

COMSTAR-UTS traditionally supports the conference as a general sponsor considering it as one of the recognized public events for discussion of up-to-date issues related to ICT industry in Russia. This year attention of the conference participants was focused on perspectives of further growth of the wire communications sector and development of optimal business models under conditions of saturation of the basic segment of the market, appearance of new growth drivers and significant increase of competition. 
Opening the first plenary session Sergey Pridantsev, President of JSC COMSTAR-UTS said to the participants and guests of the conference: "Today the further development of the industry is possible only under conditions of introduction by companies of new technological solutions and additional premium services. For now the main growth drivers are broadband Internet access and active expansion of large alternative operators to regions where penetration of Internet access services is still relatively low, and also building nation-wide multi-service networks of the new generation. Other important factor is appearance of new long-distance communications players as a necessary condition of successful regional development. One more obvious tendency is intertwining of telecom and media businesses on the basis of production and distribution of digital content. And finally, consolidation of the market is worth to be pointed out especially– creation by the companies, working in adjacent segments, large, including international, alliances with participation of global players. All these factors were taken into consideration in the course of building up of the development strategy of the Group of companies COMSTAR-UTS till the Year 2011".

Within the frames of theme-based session "Growth drivers and instruments. Increase of business efficiency. Proven experience and strategies for the nearest years" Alexander Gorbunov, vice president for strategy and development, COMSTAR-United TeleSystems, represent his report: "On the way to multimedia services in every apartment: development strategy of the Group of companies COMSTAR-UTS in Moscow". He outlined the model of universal operator, based on integration of wire-line and wireless telecommunication solutions for provision of unique package of services to subscribers.

Nikolay Maksimenka, CEO of JSC MGTS, a member of COMSTAR-UTS Group, took part in a Round-table " Competition in the fixed line market is increasing. What comes next? " The discussion gathered together Executives of the largest Russian fixed-line and mobile telecom networks operators, participants of the telecommunication transit and DLD/ILD market, industry experts and analytics, they considered such issues as conditions for the increase of competition on the market of wire communications, backgrounds for the growth of participants’ number in the consumers’ sector of the long-distance communications market, price formation and tariff policy issues, and also what kind of influence mobile operators could exert on the wire communication market if they enter it. In particular, N. Maksimenka mentioned in his speech about such significant projects of the Group of companies COMSTAR-UTS as modernization of "the last mile" based on FTTC and ADSL2+ technologies, and also about establishment of pilot zone IMS.