OREANDA-NEWS. June 24, 2010. Yandex launches a partnership program for mobile service providers to allow their clients to use the Yandex.Maps application for free. MegaFon, the first company to join the program, has already made their customers in Moscow, Moscow Region, Central Federal Region, Urals, Caucasus, Siberia and Far East enjoy all features of Yandex.Maps on their mobiles free of charge.

A special version of Yandex.Maps for MegaFon clients allows them to use the application without paying the data usage fee. The charge free application offers the same opportunities as a regular version. Users can search for places and companies, find out exactly where they are, check with the traffic map and share their local traffic information. In addition, they can also have access to MegaFon’s ‘Navigator’ service right from the Yandex.Maps application. The special version of Yandex.Maps for mobile is available at http://mobile.yandex.ru/maps/megafon/mappromo.xml.

“Mobile maps featuring traffic information are perfect in every respect except one thing, the cost of usage – the more you use them, the higher is your bill. We are happy that now this problem has been solved for the clients of MegaFon, who can now use Yandex.Maps on their mobile devices absolutely for free”, says Andrey Sebrant, head of Marketing for Yandex Services. “We will work on providing such an opportunity for the clients of every mobile network operator”.

“We bet on mobile internet as on one of the key areas for business development,” comments Larisa Tkachuk, Deputy CEO for Commercial Affairs at MegaFon. “Removing usage charges for Yandex.Maps mobile and promoting this application together with Yandex will attract more users to the service and will also increase the popularity of our ‘Navigator’ service.”

Currently, the cost-free Yandex.Maps for mobile is available for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Java. To read more about the special version of the Yandex.Maps application for MegaFon clients, visit Yandex's company blog (in Russian).