Rostelecom, Russia’s national long-distance operator, is participating in the 29 ^th annual Pacific Telecommunications Conference & Exhibition held by the Pacific Telecommunications Council (Pacific Telecommunications Council, PTC) on January 14–17, 2006 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

PTC’s member since 1995, Rostelecom is among the conference sponsors for the third consecutive time.

The theme for PTC’07 – “Beyond Telecom” – attracted hundreds executives to explore today’s key technology, business and policy issues created by the latest infocommunications developments. The modern world is moving beyond telecommunications as a utility service. Traditional telecom services are under siege - a wide range of new services and applications is getting more valuable. Telecom operator’s business is, therefore, changing its structure, while customers’ lifestyle is becoming further innovative and digital.

Network scarcity is giving way to bandwidth abundance. Nevertheless, in spite of continued development of IP technologies which result in decrease in costs for telephone traffic transmission, operators’ revenues from voice traffic are to remain rather high. What is going to change in the nearest ten years, that’s the way all these services will be provided to end-customers. In addition, considerable traffic volumes will be originated not through the growing offer of traditional fixed-line services, but on the back of new service offers as well as transition to forward-looking business models (web-portals, broadband access etc.).

At PTC’07, attended by 1000 representatives of telecommunications companies from over 40 countries around the world, Rostelecom’s delegation is planning to have over 30 bilateral meetings and sign a number of agreements on international traffic exchange. Among other things, international operators are demonstrating their keen interest in Europe-Asia transit (TEA) services offered by Rostelecom. Such interest is based on this route high reliability, let alone the recent undersea cable breakages because of earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) is an international, non-profit, non-governmental membership organization with the mission to promote the development of telecommunications and information technology throughout the Pacific region. Its annual Conference traditionally attracts top executives from the key players in the Asian-Pacific telecoms market.

As Russia’s national long-distance operator, Rostelecom has strong international relationships. It participates in 30 international cable systems, cooperates with 400 international operators and companies outside of Russia and belongs to a number of international industry organizations, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Telecommunication Operators Board of the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC), the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).