Mayak, a joint venture between former military enterprise A/O Mayak and Swiss company Somatel Marketing Services, has signed a contract with St Petersburg-based LenBell for the delivery of six Alcatel NV S-12 switches with a total capacity of 55,000 telephone lines. The joint venture plans to provide telephone connections to poorly served parts of the Moscow region. Another four S-12 switches will be delivered under a contract signed last November. They will be able to route the traffic of 45,000 subscribers. All the nine exchanges are scheduled for installation by the beginning of 1996 in nine cities in the Moscow region, including Podolsk, Serpukhov, Chekhov, Zheleznodorozhniy, Fryazino, Voskresensk, Zhukovsky, Ramenskoye and Kupavna. About half of the newly-built capacity will be used to shorten domestic waiting lists in those cities. The other half is to be used to serve commercial subscribers in the Moscow region. Mayak plans to use radio relay equipment to overcome the lack of fixed tele phone lines in these areas. By the year 2000, Mayak plans to install a total of 600,000 new digital telephone lines in the Moscow region, in addition to the existing 800,000 mostly analogue lines.
