OREANDA-NEWS. On 27 May 2008 was announced, that "UTK" PJSC completed the second stage of the project on provision of universal communication service using pay phones in the territory of the Southern federal district. Specialists of the Company installed 816 universal pay phones in 10 regions of the Southern Russia, bringing total number of pay phones to 8,397 units. Now, inhabitants of every locality of the Southern federal district, even the most remote one, can use communication services of high quality paying reasonable tariffs.

In 2006-2007, during the first stage of the project implementation "UTK" PJSC installed over 7.5 thousand pay phones in the territory of the Southern federal district. Implementation of the second stage took only half a year from the end of 2007 till May 2008, during which universal payphones were installed in the most remote and hard-to-reach localities.  41 pay phones were installed in the Adygeia Republic, 9 - in the Kalmykia Republic, 36 - in the Northern Ossetia- Alania Republic, 13 - in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic, 19 - in the Karachaevo – Circassian Republic, 242 universal pay phones in the Rostov Region, 28 - in the Astrakhan Region, 130 - in the Volgograd Region, 248 - in the Krasnodar kray and 50 pay phones in the Stavropol Kray. Expenses for implementation of the second stage exceeded 250 million roubles.

 "During implementation of the universal service project the Company both installed payphones and updated its networks that allowed to improve the quality of telecom services’ provision in many settlements", - Technical Director of "UTK" PJSC Evgeny Rzhevsky noted.

According to the communication law, a universal payphone shall be installed in each inhabited locality and it should not take more than one hour for a user of universal services to arrive at a payphone on foot. Payphone users shall be able to make outgoing calls, get free access to emergency services and receive incoming calls.