COMSTAR OTS (LSE: CMST) acquired a 100% shareholding in Strategia, a company which, in its turn, owns 100% of Ural Telephone Company, Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region’s second most important telephone operator. The price of Strategia’s 100% shareholding in Ural Telephone Company comes to 1,015 million RUR ($43.4m). The spokesperson for COMSTAR reports Strategia was bought from a private proprietor rather than a legal entity.

Ural Telephone Company offers private customers and businesses local and area network telephone connection as well as broadband Internet access (based on ADSL and Ethernet).

‘We are buying an alternative market leader and one of Russia’s major operators. This transaction has meant greater share of Ural Federal District’s telecommunications market for COMSTAR; we are already operating in Tyumen Region, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region, and Yamalo-Nenetskiy Autonomous Region. Yekaterinburg is one of this country’s most populated and developed cities, so this acquisition means we can leave behind most other operators,’ COMSTAR-OTS President Sergey Pridantsev says.