OREANDA-NEWS. Tele2, an alternative mobile operator, has congratulated its subscribers on important date in the history of the Russian telecom market – 25 years since the first call on mobile phone. It took place on the network of Delta Telecom that entered Tele2 in 2015 as a part of integration with Rostelecom’s mobile assets.

There are over 251 mn of SIM cards registered in Russia. The first call on mobile phone took place 25 years ago: St. Petersburg mayor Anatoliy Sobchak made this phone call to his colleague in New York. The service was provided by Delta Telecom operator and was working based on the NMT-450 standard.

The historic phone call was made on Nokia Mobira MD59-NB2 that weighted about 3 kg. The device cost almost 2 thou US dollars and a phone call was charged at one dollar per minute.

The first mobile network in Moscow appeared in December 1991, several months after the first phone call on the phone. It was “Moskovskaya sotovaya svyaz” (Mobile Cellular Communications) that started providing services to Moscow subscribers. In June 2015, OJSC MSS and CJSC Delta Telecom joined LLC T2 Mobile (Tele2 brand).