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Russia’s telecom services revenues grew by over 6 pct in 2009

MOSCOW, February 9 (Itar-Tass) - Revenues from telecommunications services went up by 6.4 percent in 2009 against the 2008 figure to reach 1.3 trillion rubles, a source in the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said on Tuesday. 
Addressing a specialized conference, Telecommunications: Coping with the Global Financial and Economic Crisis and Further Tasks, Alexander Narukavnikov, director of the Ministry’s economics and finance department, said that the information and communications technologies market volume grew by two percent to reach 1.8 trillion rubles, with telecommunications accounting for 72 percent of this market. 
“In general, we can say that the sector has survived,” he noted. 
As of now, the Russian telecom sector’s top priorities include application of world standards of data transmission, upgrading obsolete telephone exchanges, switching to digital TV broadcasting and expansion to new frequency bands. According to the Ministry of Communications, by 2015, the total volume of investments into these projects will amount to 163.9 billion rubles, of which 76.366 billion are included in the budget.