The Telecommunications Ministry plans to start charging on a minute-for-minute basis for local calls, Russia's communications minister Vladimir Bulgak said.


Bulgak said that it will take some time to prepare the public psychologically for this change.


His ministry plans to introduce telephone meters across the country as necessary, but gave no details or timetable for the introduction of telephone tariffing.


"Technically, it is not a problem for us," Bulgak said Tuesday. "For example, in Moscow 3 million out of 4 million phones are already equipped with meters. It is only a matter of switching them on."


The ministry plans to allow the phone users to have an unspecified number of "free minutes" per month. There will be special discounts for the elderly and the disabled.


Recently the Telecommunications Ministry introduced telephone meters as an experiment to measure public reaction in the city of Kemerovo in eastern Siberia.


Bulgak said that a less-than-onerous tariff system was adopted, but he admitted that local telephone lines became "less busy."


Russia needs to introduce payment for local calls to raise money for network modernization, and to attract foreign interest in the forthcoming investment tender for one-quarter of Svyazinvest, the holding company for the local telephone operating companies in the Russian regions.


At present, investment in Russian telecommunications is heavily focused on international links, for which tariffs are approaching world rates. Bulgak said that the new fiber-optic link Rostov-Novorossiisk-Istanbul-Palermo will be put in operation early next year. A spur will link the line to Odessa in Ukraine.