OREANDA-NEWS. March 03, 2011. Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It is a rare occasion when the top managers and major shareholders of our leading telecommunication companies got together at the same table. Modern technology is of major importance in today’s world, and it is growing every day. We maintain constant contact at the government level with our leading companies, including discussions on the issue of tariffs. You have adopted positive decisions on roaming, which directly affect the wallets of our people and will facilitate your development because the more accessible a service is, the more customers you acquire.

As the communications minister informed me, today’s meeting is devoted to pooling our efforts. It is only natural that customers all over the world want to use the most modern means of communications, and our customers are no exception. Fourth generation technology is just being introduced. I’m happy to admit that communications is a field in which our companies, technical specialists, and managers occupy leading innovative and technological positions.

Today, the heads of private companies and representatives of official, government structures have gathered here. I hope very much that the ideas that you discuss today will also be put into practice by your employees (and I’ve seen that they are young and talented people, captivated by their work). You may rely upon government resources to support your plans so that eventually this will improve the quality of services you are providing for the people of Russia.

Please, Minister of Communications, Mr Shchegolev, go ahead.

Igor Shchegolev: Thank you, Mr Putin. Indeed, the development of telecommunications has reached a point at which companies have to pay more and more for the construction of new networks, whereas customers are used to the reduction of costs for these technologies.

At the moment, it is of course difficult for some companies to develop the infrastructure because both capital investment and the costs of servicing this technology are growing. We should develop a new approach to the development of the infrastructure whereby major companies can pool their efforts and make use of it. This will help develop the network faster, and customers will receive new services sooner.

Since every company will save on capital and overhead costs, eventually these services will cost our customers a great deal less. The network will be built faster and will become more accessible not only in major cities, which is happening now, but also in small inhabited areas. We are hoping very much that as a result of our efforts we will manage to create a truly interesting business model that will make Russia one of the world’s leaders not only in cell phone coverage but also in technology. We hold the lead in this technology. Not many countries have built fourth generation commercial networks. This is a very interesting and notable event in this respect.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Chemezov, please, speak up (addressing Sergei Chemezov, general director of the Russian Technologies State Corporation).

Sergei Chemezov:  I understand that modern telecommunications are playing an exceptional role in the Russian economy. We have supported the ideas of the Scartel company, which is a relative newcomer to the field. Today it is represented by Sergei Adonyev and Denis Sverdlov. We have backed and jointly built the existing fourth generation network in St Petersburg and in Moscow (we have already completed and demonstrated it) and also in Kazan (it has been built but is not yet completely operational). We are now working to deploy this network in other cities – Krasnodar and Sochi.

Today, Scartel is poised to create a complete network that will cover the entire territory of Russia. As Mr Shchegolev said here, to reduce costs on infrastructure, we have agreed with our leading operators – MTS, Beeline, MegaFon and Rostelecom – that Scartel will create a common infrastructure…