OREANDA-NEWS. December 30, 2009. CenterTelecom OJSC announced the results of a working meeting between members of management and representatives of Anatel, Brazil's national telecommunications agency. The meeting was held with the assistance of Russia's Ministry of Telecommunications and Mass Media which initiated the Brazilian delegation's visit to Russia.

In the course of the meeting conducted at the CenterTelecom office a mechanism of universal telecommunications service implementation was presented. The service was successfully implemented by CenterTelecom from 2006-2008 in Russia's Central Federal District. Accomplishment of such a major task attracted special attention from the Brazilian delegation; they were primarily interested in legal aspects of the service's implementation, technologic al solutions and various issues related to provision of high quality services through the public pay telephone network built by CenterTelecom across a large area. CenterTelecom's specialists imparted knowledge regarding the project's implementation and its results. Anatel's representatives pointed out that the information provided by CenterTelecom was very important with regard to the agency's plans to launch a similar project in Brazil.

Vadim Kondratov, Deputy General Director, Technical Director, CenterTelecom, commenting on the meeting results, pointed out: "This is not the first meeting of the company's specialists with representatives of a foreign telecommunications market regulator. In summer 2009 we met representatives of the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications and discussed various issues of universal telecommunications service provision in Russia."

CenterTelecom has been successfully implementing the universal telecommunications service program since 2006. To date the company has installed 54,778 public pay telephones, provided telephone communications in 51,965 localities and installed 435 new automated telephone exchanges in the Central Federal District. The company has also arranged sales of unified payment cards allowing use of universal telecommunications service in any Russian region.