In the summer months Ericsson Nikola Tesla signed contracts exceeding the total amount of 46 million USD

With Enothera Ltd from Great Britain, the investor for the end user, the Ministry of Power Industry of Uzbekistan (Uzbek Energo) an agreement was signed for the delivery and commissioning of the main exchange MD110 and of the remote stage, with 45 base stations for the use of wireless phones of DECT standard, of the UMUX equipment and signaling converters and 5 hops of Mini Links ML-7E to bridge the distance of 230 km between the thermal power plant Talimarjan and the city of Samarkand. The equipment will be used to provide telecom service with the new 800 MW thermal power plan in Talimarjan, where the exchange will be installed and for its connection with the telecommunications network of the Ministry of Power Industry and with the public telecom network of Uzbekistan.

Early in June ETK signed an agreement with the private telecom operator Transtelecom from Tiraspolje in the Republic of Moldova for the capital modernization and extension of the fixed telephone network. The contracted value is over 6 million USD and it concerns the delivery of two exchanges AXE 810 Enabler 1.0 with pertaining 14 remote subscriber stages ASM and the extension of the existing AXE 810 exchange in Tiraspolje. The contracted equipment will be delivered end of November 2004 and commissioned end of March 2005.

In June several major contracts were signed with our partners from Siberia, amounting to more than 17 million USD. The Siberia region, with OAO Sibirtelekom as our key customer has for many years now been Ericccson Nikola Tesla’s most yielding market in the Russian Federation. There we installed or have booked orders for more than 45 AXE exchanges (transit, local, etc.) with over one million ports. Beside AXE we installed there many other products, such as MD 110, Business Phone and Mini Link system, SDH equipment, etc. In Omsk we signed an agreement with the Sberbanka. The agreement includes an extension of the existing MD 110 exchange and the upgrade of the system to BC12 release.

In Omsk we signed an agreement with the Sberbanka. The agreement includes an extension of the existing MD 110 exchange and the upgrade of the system to BC12 release.

In Orenburg the company signed with the Police Administration of Orenburg (UVD) an agreement for the extension and upgrade of the existing MD 100 system (BC12 release).

In Khabarovsk we signed an agreement with our traditional customer Amurenerg for the delivery of two MD 110 exchanges, which also includes the installation and testing of the systems.

In September we signed with the largest mobile operator in Belarus, JV MDC – Velcom, a new agreement, the eighth till now, for an extension of the GSM network. This new agreement amounts to 14,5 million USD and it includes the extension of the system core MSC/VLR and BSC controllers in R10 version, the delivery of base stations of the latest generation and of radio relay transmission system MiniLink, the extension of GPRS and WAP and the multimedia system, MMS. The extension of the system will provide better coverage, the possibility to connect additional 300.000 users (now 900.000 users) and it will enable this business partner of many years' standing to retain the leading position in the market of Belarus in terms of quality and service portfolio.

Ericsson Nikola Tesla also signed an agreement with Technoimport, Habana for the delivery of four MD 110 exchanges, that also includes the installation supervision.

New contracts were signed in Kazakhstan: In June we signed with our distributor, the Argus company from Astana, two contracts for the extension of MD 110 exchanges and for system upgrading, and in July we signed with the same partner another contract for the optimization of the existing network.

With ALSI Telecom we signed a contract to the value of 6.4 million USD for the delivery and implementation of AXE Enabler, ANS, MD 110 and of the equipment to be provided by third suppliers. The task in question is the extension of the network of Transtelekom as the end user. The performance of this contract will be finished by the end of 2004. In view of many existing plants along the railway communication that have to be digitalized we believe that this is only one in a future series of projects by the same customer.

We signed a contract with the operator ARNA (Almaty) on prolonged support for the installed AXE exchange.

Peterstar, one of the most successful private operators in the Russian Federation who provides services to more than 60% of corporate clients in St. Peterburg and the Leningrad Oblast started the implementation of its multi-service access network based on Ericsson solution EDA. In March we signed a small, however important contract for the initial four locations in St. Peterburg and now we contracted their extension and the implementation of four new locations in Pskov.