Before the start of the press conference, the attending journalists were invited to the Company's Public Payphone Network Department (PPND). The press visitation was timed to the celebrations of the 100^th anniversary of the Moscow Public Payphone. While the presspersons were shown around the premises, the PPND specialists gave a hands-on demonstration of the testing equipment to verify the PJSC MGTS public payphone sets and telephone cards and the performance of the card-operated public payphone network control center of the Company.

During the press conference, Mr. Vladimir S. Lagutin, the Company's General Director, apprised the journalists of the prospective services to be provided to users through the PJSC MGTS card-operated public payphone and public switched broadband networks.

One of the priority fields of the PJSC MGTS activity is the Company's public payphone business oriented to broad sections of customers, both Moscow natives and visitors to the capital-city. In 2003, the Moscow public payphone will celebrate its 100^th birthday. To date, PJSC MGTS is the operator of the advanced card and card-coin public payphone network which is the largest in Russia. By the end of the present year, the number of the said public payphones will be increased up to 14 000 sets. Apart from conventional voice services, the Company contemplates providing access to Internet services through an interactive web public payphone network. According to preliminary appraisals, up to 1000 such public payphones could be deployed in Moscow. Bearing in mind the experience of European operators, however, PJSC MGTS intends to install a pilot batch of some sixty (60) web public payphones throughout 2003 in Moscow, based on which a research into the demand for their services will be conducted, as well as the Company's interaction with advertising agencies and customers and optimum deployment of web public payphones to achieve maximal traffic flow and efficient advertisement sales will be worked through.

The following services can be provided with the aid of an inter-active web public payphone: conventional voice communication, access to Internet and e-mail resources, SMS messages sending, transmission of photographic and video images, and placement of active and interactive advertisements. Further on, electronic commerce functionality can also be added to the interactive web public payphone.

PJSC MGTS web public payphones will be mounted at places of folk assemblage in multitudes, i.e. at airports, large shopping and recreation centers, restaurants, big hotels lobbies, exhibition halls, and at other facilities oriented to working with the city inhabitants.

By means of creating a web public payphones network, PJSC MGTS intends to obtain additional revenue sources, first and foremost, from the sale of advertisement seats and information to the interested agencies.

The sale of services of the metropolitan-area broadband data network of the Company built from 2000 to 2003 is yet another field of the PJSC MGTS business activity. The Company's public switched data network makes available to PJSC MGTS subscribers, both private individuals and corporate customers, top-notch advanced telecommunica-tions services, such as high-speed access to Internet, virtual private networks, and voice transmission via Internet. In the immediate future, the following services will be implemented based on the PJSC MGTS public switched data network: video on demand, videoconferencing, telemedicine and distant learning, and many others. By the present time, the Company's data network has been fully activated, enabling interconnection in 98% of the Moscow domain. This project, in terms of its scale and level of complexity and sophistication, yields to none of overseas analogous projects, making it possible to speak of up-to-date telecommunications in Russia not in the future, but in the present tense.

For its corporate customers, PJSC MGTS offers services geared to setting up virtual dedicated data networks (VPN service). By means of such new generation networks, any number of office premises and shopfloors can be interconnected into one network with a possibility of transmitting computer data and voice information, videoconferencing and linking up with other networks.

The PJSC MGTS presentation stand at the annual international exhibition "Svyaz-Expocomm 2003"	Showing around the Public Payphone Network Department of the Company

Public payphone being tested in a thermohumidity chamber	Public payphone testing and repair shopfloor	Telephone cards under testing
Press conference participants	General Director of Public Joint Stock Company Moscow City Telephone Network (MGTS) Vladimir S. Lagutin	The press conference by the PJSC MGTS General Director excited keen interest of the mass media people

Exclusive interview to the RTR national TV channel	Web public payphone - capital gift to the Muscovites on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Moscow Public Payphone - pictured on the PJSC MGTS stand