This month, Moscow Cellular Communications and Multiregional Transit Telecom announced the roll-out of what it calls the SOTEL project, a long-mooted idea to provide extensive roaming capabilities for customers of NMT 450 standard networks in Russia . Under the project, Transit Telecom which brings together most of Russia’s NMT-450 operators, will build a transport digital long distance network to help its members provide roaming to their mobile customers. According to Transit Telecom officials , the company has signed a contract with L M Ericsson Telefon AB for the delivery of eight mobile switching centers worth about $15m. Two of the switches have already been put into operation in Moscow and Novosibirsk, two others in Samara and Rostov-on-Don will go into maintenance by this fall, the rest in St Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Nizhni Novgorod and Ekaterinburg will be launched by the end of 1997. The SOTEL project was developed by Giprosviaz research institute and approved by the Russian Ministry of Communications in July 1995. Transit Telecom said NMT-450 roaming is now or will soon be available to more than 50 Russian regions. It is already possible with Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belorussia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. According to Transit Telecom, Russian NMT-450 networks now serve more than 60,000 subscribers. By 2005, the target for SOTEL completion, the federal NMT-450 network will provide services to one million users, Transit Telecom said.
