Personal mobile phone services will initially be provided in the central part of the country once the ground station in Pavlovsky Posad outside Moscow goes online, GlobalTel, the exclusive provider of Globalstar services in Russia, said on its website.

Ground stations in Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk are scheduled to go into operation in the fall and at the end of this year, respectively, GlobalTel said.

The Russian segment of the Globalstar system, consisting of the three stations, was initially supposed to have opened in June. But the launch was postponed due to delays with deliveries of subscriber equipment, red tape and other organizational problems.

Once all three stations are put into operation, global satellite communications services will be available to virtually all of Russia south of 70 degrees north latitude. Each station will have access to Russia's public telecoms network.

The monthly subscription fee for Globalstar services is expected to be $40, phone calls will cost $1.80 to $2.40 per minute inside Russia, and the phones themselves will have a price tag of $2,280.

The cost of the Globalstar project, which consists of 48 satellites, is about $4 billion.

GlobalTel was founded by Russian national long-distance provider Rostelecom and Globalstar Limited Partnership on a parity basis.

The Globalstar L.P. consortium includes the leading firms Loral Space & Communications (main partner and founder with 45%), Qualcomm, Elsacom, Space System/Loral, Daimler-Benz Aerospace, Alenia, Alcatel, Hyundai, China Telecom, DACOM, France Telecom, AirTouch Communications, and Vodafone Group.

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