OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2009. A press conference of OJSC North-West Telecom and Intel Corporation was held in St. Petersburg attended by representatives of the Government of St. Petersburg , where the launching of a new Computer For Teachers program was announced. The program will be valid in the northern Capital from July 10 till December 31, 2009.

In October 2008, N.W.Telecom jointly with Intel launched a program named Avangard+PC”. Its uniqueness is that for the first time in Russia, a communication operator became a kind of a

The program   successfully operates in all regions of the North-Western Federal District. Under the terms of this program, N.W.Telecom subscribers may connect to the Avangard service for a period of six to twelve months at special rates, buying a mini notebook at once on favorable terms, i.e. by installments also for six or twelve months. An interest-free payment by installments is granted directly to the user by the operator, without an intermediary bank.

Six months of the program’s operation showed good results, for more than two thousand people used the terms of the program. The project was considered successful, and from June 1, 2009 on, N.W.Telecom expanded the product line of personal computers offered to users under the Avangard-PC program. “The success of the Avangard-PC program is evident to us. This is why we are rapidly expanding our product line and are willing to support Intel’s educational initiatives”, says Oleg Popov, commercial director of N.W.Telecom.

Today, anyone willing may, when connecting to the Avangard tariff, buy the novelty of the Russian personal computer market – the MSI NetOn AP 1900 NetTop (PC and monitor in one case.) In the near future, N.W.Telecom will additionally extend its model line, presenting a full-scale notebook under the Avangard-PC program. Thus, the product offer by N.W.Telecom will cover the entire price range, from the initial to the advanced level, both in the portable and tabletop computers sector.

Now cooperation between the two companies is not limited to this. On the contrary, it is expanding: a joint program named “Computer For Teachers” will be launched on July 10, 2009 to be supported by the Committee for Education of St. Petersburg. According to John Davies, Vice-President of Intel and supervisor of the Intel World Ahead program, “Educational and telecom programs are the two most important components of the Intel World Ahead program. It should be expressly noted that the success of one program became a catalyst for the other. We hope that the Intel and N.W.Telecom cooperation experience will be taken over also by other Interregional Companies of the Svyazinvest Group.”

Under the terms of the Computer For Teachers program, any school teacher will be able to purchase an up-to-date personal computer at the most advantageous price with an interest-free payment by installments for six or 12 months. In addition, the program subscriber will be entitled to no-limit Avangard Internet at the Sprint rates, from the day of agreement signing till the end of 2009. To use the offered program, all you have to do is to receive your certificate of subscriber at your occupation location, and then present it at the agreement signing at the Customer Service Center of North-West Telecom.

The Computer For Teachers program serve a natural continuation of the educational initiatives implemented by the Government of St. Petersburg jointly with Intel. An agreement was signed at the recent Petersburg International Economic Forum, under which Intel and the Government of St. Petersburg agree to make any effort to provide the general educational institutions of the Northern Capital with 250,000 school computers in 2009-2012.