MTS Ukrainian Unit Drops Connection with Golden Telecom

MOSCOW, Mar 2 (Prime-Tass) -- UMC, the Ukrainian subsidiary of Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), shut down its connection with Golden Telecom on Thursday after the two companies failed to agree on interconnection fees, MTS' PR Director Yelena Kokhanovskaya said, Vedomosti business daily reported Friday.

UMC, which is Ukraine's second largest Ukrainian mobile operator, and the Ukrainian mobile unit of US-registered telecommunications operator Golden Telecom have been in talks since November 2006 over prolonging their interconnection agreement, Kokhanovskaya said.

UMC proposed setting the fee at 0.5 hryvnas per minute for calls between the two companies' users, Kokhanovskaya said. Golden Telecom wanted to set the amount at 0.3 hryvnas, she said, the daily reported.

A source said that UMC's interconnection fees with other Ukrainian mobile operators had been set at 0.5 hryvnas per minute. Another source said that Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar had the same interconnection fees with other operators, the daily reported.

Golden Telecom said in a press release that it considered the fee proposed by UMC to be too high. The company said it considered 0.3 hryvnas per minute to be the fair level, noting that fixed-line operators charged 0.18 hryvnas per minute, Vedomosti reported.

A spokesperson with Golden Telecom said that the company still connected its users with UMC, but via other operators, the daily reported.

UMC has 20.5 million users, while Golden Telecom has 50,000 subscribers, the daily reported.

(5.05 hryvnas - U.S. $1)

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Posted to the site on 3rd March 2007