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RZD Telecoms Arm Seeks to Double Revenue

BANGKOK -- Telecoms operator TTK, a subsidiary of state-owned Russian Railways, plans to double revenue from international telecoms services by the end of next year, an executive said Wednesday.

TTK expects revenue from telecoms services to reach $600 million by the end of 2008, of which $32 million to $35 million will come from international business, said Igor Kelshev, TTK's senior vice president for international sales.

"We expect to double the figure to $60 million to $70 million by the end of next year," Kelshev said on the sidelines of a telecoms conference in Bangkok.

Last year, TTK had revenue from telecoms services of around $400 million.

TTK, formerly known as Transtelecom, is wholly owned by Russian Railways, or RZD.

Telecoms services bring in the bulk of the company's revenue, and its biggest customers include Japan's NTT Communications, China Netcom and China Telecom.

The company's 50,000-kilometer backbone digital fiber-optic communications network connects 71 of Russia's 83 regions, which account for almost 90 percent of the population.

TTK, one of the top three fixed-line operators in Russia, planned to boost its share of the fixed, retail broadband market to 17 percent by 2015 and planned to invest more than $1.5 billion in developing new and existing networks by that year, Kelshev said.

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