The net profit of Uralsvyazinform, the telecommunications and Internet provider, went down by 27.5% in the first half of 2008 compared to a year earlier. The company’s operating profit decreased by 17.2%.

Apart from that, the provider’s revenue resulting from the local telephone connection services dropped by 2.2% due to a new distribution of tariff schemes among their subscribers: more customers chose to pay for the minutes they actually spend talking on the phone rather than to pay a fixed monthly fee that does not depend on the amount of time one spends talking. Besides, some of the additional services fees became less expensive and a new way of charging the customers for the periods of conversation that last less than sixty seconds was introduced.

The company’s experts report they have also made fewer profits resulting from the intra-area exchange services due to the fact that their customers only used the landline connections for 278.5 million minutes in the first half of 2008, which falls short of the figures for the first half of 2007 by 10.5%. Thus the profits decreased by .4%.