In early April 2008 OJSC North-West Telecom connected the 200 000th subscriber to Avangard broadband internet access.

Avangard was first presented in St.-Petersburg at the Norvecom exhibition in February 2006. In 2006 the St.-Petersburg branch of OJSC NWT had 50 000 subscribers, by end 2007 their number reached 170 thousand.

The rapid growth of subscribers shows the high demand for this service. Avangard provides not only modern reliable and convenient Internet access, but also a whole range of multimedia services. Currently apart from Internet access the subscribers also receive additional services, for example file exchange, game servers, blogs etc., interactive Avangard TV including digital quality TV, "on demand video”, time-shifting.

The additional Avangard services such as network games, My pictures, My Files and My Journal, available in St.-Petersburg since late 2006, are currently used by more than half of the Avangard subscribers. Avangard TV services launched in December 2007 are used by 600 subscribers.

O. Popov, deputy CEO and financial director, OJSC NWT: Despite our recent success,we should not rest: the subscribers' needs are rapidly growing and we need to be able to respond to future requests. Our next task is Triple pay services based on optical network. To strengthen its market position and to digitize its network, the company starts a large-scale implementation of PON technology in St-Petersburg. For these services the optical channel will ‘enter’ each subscriber’s flat. In the nearest future the customers will receive the communication services of new generation: speed will now be measured in tens of megabits. Some lucky subscribers in St.-Petersburg are already testing the new services".

For full information of Avangard and Avangard TV services, please, visit www.avangard-dsl.ru, and www.avangard-tv.ru.