OREANDA-NEWS On 18 February 2009 was announced, that President of the Group of companies COMSTAR – United TeleSystems, the largest integrated telecom services operator in Russia and the CIS, Sergey Pridantsev took part in international conference "Telecommunication industry amid the global financial crisis".

Igor Shchegolev, Minister of telecom and mass communications of the Russian Federation opened the conference. Representatives of state authority bodies participated in the conference (Presidential Executive Office, Ministry of telecom and mass communications, Ministry of economic development, Federal communications agency, Federal service for supervision in the sphere of telecom, mass communications and information technologies, Federal antimonopoly service, Federal tariff service, State Duma and the Federation Council), together with the heads of the largest national and foreign telecom companies, ICT market experts.

Within the frames of plenary session "Telecom services market amid financial fragility" Sergey Pridantsev, President of JSC COMSTAR-UTS, submitted his report on the following topic "How to strengthen the leadership on the telecom market in the conditions of crisis". He analyzed main tendencies in terms of national telecom industry development in the YY2007-2008 and designed the paradigm of ICT industry development under conditions of new economic situation. As explained by S. Pridantsev, in the nearest future the dynamics of the fixed telecommunications market in Russia will be defined by such factors as: decrease in consumer demand and shifting of consumers preferences to more affordable, mass services, decrease in operators’ investments relating to networks development, development of new business segments (for example, remote access services). At the same time, there will be a tendency of strengthening the leading market players’ positions by means of further consolidation and creation of large multi-service operators. President of COMSTAR-UTS particularly mention that the role of the State role is increasing, in such spheres as tariff regulation, licensing procedures, networks digitalization, provision of the necessary financial recourses for the industry development and smooth passage to non-discriminatory access to the Last mile taking into account interests of all the market participants.

"The crisis helps not only to identify the actual problems but also gives some additional opportunities for growth relating to companies which have a stable diversify business, well-balanced debt portfolio, recourses for consolidation and which are able to manage expenditures effectively, - noted Sergey Pridantsev in his speech. – At the present conjuncture, we are not going to change our perspective strategy of development "Five angles of attack". Our priorities are structure optimization, MGTS, broadband Internet access, regions, Svyazinvest and they will remain unchanged, we will only modify the tactics related to implementation of the set tasks. This year COMSTAR has come into the Federal level and have all the chances to realize its major strategic goal – to become alternative telecom operator number one in Russia ".

Objectives of the conference are analysis of the current economic situation in Russia and worldwide, preparation of forecasts relating to its development, determination of influence exerted by global financial crisis on the telecommunications market and development of anti-crisis strategy.