Rostelecom (Ростелеком) is Russia’s largest provider of digital services for a wide variety of consumers, households, private businesses, government and municipal authorities, and other telecom providers. Rostelecom interconnects all local public operators’ networks into a single national network for long-distance service. In other words, if one makes a long-distance call or originates Internet contact to or from Russia, it is likely that Rostelecom is providing part of the service. The company's stock trades primarily on the Moscow Exchange.
History
Prior to 1990, responsibility for the provision of telecommunications services lie at the Ministry of Communications of the USSR. On June 26, 1990, the Ministry of Communications of the USSR established a state-owned joint-stock company Sovtelekom, which was given the rights to operate the telecommunications network of the USSR. On December 30, 1992, by order of the State Property Committee of Russia, a state-owned enterprise Rostelecom, which consisted of 20 state long-distance and international calls, as well as communication equipment Intertelekom was organized.
Throughout the 1990s, the company which was part of Svyazinvest, was the sole long-distance operator in Russia. Alongside it, local companies operated in the different regions of Russia under the umbrella of Svyazinvest while Rostelecom connected between their networks. In 2001, these companies were merged to form a number of regional incumbent telecommunications operators: CentreTelecom, SibirTelecom, Dalsvyaz, Uralsvyazinform, VolgaTelecom, North-West Telecom, Southern Telecommunications Company and Dagsvyazinform. On 2011, Svyazinvest was liquidated with the regional subsidiaries merged into Rostelecom.
On October 18, 2006 "Rostelecom" received a certificate of quality of IP-MPLS network and became the ISP backbone. In December 2006, Rostelecom and the telecommunications company KDDI in Japan under the "Transit Europe - Asia" signed an agreement to build a line of Nakhodka - Naoetsu with total bandwidth of 640 Gbit/s instead of the previous 560 Mbit/s.
Ownership
Owners of Rostelecom ordinary (voting) share as of November 2021: Federal Agency for State Property Management (38.2%) JSC Telecom Investments (20.98%) VTB Bank (8.44%) Vnesheconombank (3.96%)
Operations
PJSC Rostelecom is the largest integrated digital services and products provider, operating in all segments of the telecommunications market in Russia. The Company serves millions of households, state and private enterprises across the country.
Rostelecom is a key strategic innovator that provides solutions in the following fields: E-Government, cybersecurity, Beeline and MTS data-centres and cloud computing, biometry, healthcare, education and housing & utility services.
In the summer of 2019, it was announced that Rostec plans to develop digital healthcare together with PJSC Rostelecom.
Land network
The company's network is based on extant Russian fiber-optic cable lines - FOCL. By cable the network is connected to countries in Europe and East Asia.
Fiber-optic cable lines crosses Russian Federation on directions «Moscow — Novorossiysk», «Moscow — Khabarovsk» and «Moscow — Saint Petersburg».
IP transit has been allocated to a separate company, RTComm, using Rostelecom's STM-16 FOCL resources, but Rostelecom is building its own STM-64 (9,9533 Gbit/s) network, which as of August 2006, covered Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Stavropol, and planned to cover the whole of Russia by the end of 2006.
Rostelecom had 29.2 million local fixed-line voice subscribers, 12.4 million mobile voice subscribers, 7.4 million fixed-line broadband subscribers and 5.5 million pay-TV subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2010.
Satellite network
Using the services of the Russian Orbital Group, Rostelecom has built its satellite system for its Eastern region, comprising 11 land stations in Siberia and the Russian Far East. Satellite service for the Western region is being built at this time.