The Russian State Statistical Committee has published the results of a survey, which finds that – unlike the Russian economy as a whole – the Russian telecommunications industry is doing well. In 1992 the amount of installed optical fibre increased by 40%, to a total of 330,000 miles. The total length of long-distance phone lines increased by 6% to 170m miles. Satellite channels increased by a tiny fraction of 0.4%, while digital lines increased by one and a half times. The total length of digital transmission channels has reached 2.6m miles. Rural communications also seen growth – in 1992, 96,500 new phone lines were installed, 40% more than in 1991. But around 11m Russian families are still waiting for a home phone, and many villages, even in the Moscow area, are half an hour’s drive from the nearest phone. New cable line installations were down by 35%, and new radio relay channels by 27%. New city phone exchanges were down by 17%. Only 705,000 new phone lines were installed in cities and towns during 1992. There were 939 new satellite earthstations installed – 18% less than in 1991 while four new communications satellites were launched. By the beginning of 1993, Russia’s national cellular network consisted of 25,500 subscriber radial stations of the Altai brand – an outdated system working on the 450MHz frequency band – 10,000 pagers, and 6,000 cellular and zone cellular phones. The total installed telephone base increased by 504,000. Meanwhile, as the number of home phones rose by 687,000, the number of business phones fell by 183,000; the report puts this down to state enterprises cutting the number of calls they make to save money. The number of public pay phones plunged last year, with local pay phones declining 11% and long-distance pay phones by 13%. The main reasons are the increased cost of producing and manufacturing pay phones, plus theft and vandalism. Another reason is the cost of calls – the phone authorities have just put the prices up from 2 kopeks to 1 rouble 001) for an unlimited duration local call from a pay phone. The registered base of facsimile machines doubled to 13,400, although only a small number of facsimile machines are actually registered. In a blast from the past, the number of telex terminals rose by a third to 6,800.