Uraltel (merged with MTS)

active

Uraltel was created in 1993 as a closed joint-stock company by the Uraltelecom (regional operator), Yekaterinburg's City Telephone Network, some local Russian companies, and MST Investor from the US, which owned 50% of the company. In August 1994 Uraltel received a license to operate an AMPS 800 cellular network in the Sverdlovsk region. The area had a total population of 4.5 million. Uraltel started commercial operation in April 1996. By 1997 the company served in the Yekaterinburg and Koltsovo regions, with a total of 500 subscribers that year and network capacity of 2000 lines. Plexsys delivered the network. From July 1997 Uraltel has been providing GSM-900 mobile services in the Sverdlovsk region. The company had 40 GSM-900 base stations in Yekaterinburg in mid-2003, and also had a license to provide GSM-1800 services. The company's network covers 27 large cities and towns in the region, including Yekaterinburg. In August 2003 Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) acquired a 46.65% stake in Uraltel by purchasing Vostok Mobile B.V. from the US MCT Corp. At the time, MTS already held a 53.2% stake in Uraltel through its 100%-owned subsidiary Telecom-900. At the end of 2004 MTS owned 98.85% of Uraltel stock.