Internet Service Provider

Rostelekom (BajjkalVestKom)

Closed joint-stock company Baikalwestcom is the largest mobile operator in Eastern Siberia. Today Baikalwestcom provides services in GSM-900/1800 and CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO standards.
The company started its activity in 1995 with deployment of NMT-450 standard network. Base stations were installed in Irkutsk and Angarsk and the first customers were served; their number at the time of the network launch was 210. The average cost of NMT cell phones at that time was $1200.
In 1996 services of BVK were made available in Usolie-Sibirskoe, Shelekhovo and the village of Bolshaya Rechka. The prices for the equipment and connection were cut by 40%. In a year and a half the company's clients, whose number has already grown into thousands (with entry into the coverage area of Bratsk), got access to the roaming service, uniting the NMT-networks of 88 cities of Russia.
The operator reached a qualitatively new level in 1999 by launching the GSM standard network. This standard is more oriented to customers who need not only calls (local, long-distance and international calls, national and international roaming) but also a set of related services (sms, IP-telephony, conference calls, voice mail, data transfer via GPRS\EDGE) and entertainment (mms, sms-chat, mobile TV). In 2005, roaming-free communication with the GSM network of Ulan-Ude Cellular Network was opened.

In 2006 the operator was the first in Eastern Siberia to launch the third generation cellular network of CDMA2000 1x EV-DO standard. The standard is oriented both to multilingual customers with the need for unlimited voice traffic (the best option for legal entities) and to customers who need to be constantly present in the Internet (1x protocol and EV-DO technology).