UrBC, Moscow, March 5, 2018. MegaFon is now the Speedtest Award winner for Fastest Mobile Network according to Ookla, the global Internet speed test leader, the telecommunications provider’s press service reports. Based on speed testing results provided by Ookla’s Russian users of Speedtest app, MegaFon proved the ISP with the highest-speed mobile Internet connection in the second and third quarters of 2017. The data downloading speed came to 25.04 Mb/sec on average. Ookla looked into data from over 7,900 speed tests of all ISPs taken on 1,200 LTE-supporting devices. ‘MegaFon makes a special

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2018. Ural Airlines are already selling tickets for their new international Vladivostok-Beijing-Vladivostok flight (to be made available starting March 28, 2018), the air carrier’s press service reports. According to the airline, the flight is two hours and forty minutes long; flight U6 803 will be operated three times a week. ‘Travelers arriving in Beijing will find there the mysterious and magnificent masterpieces of the Chinese: the Great Chinese Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Confucius, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, and much else besides.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region’s residents had 5,544 homes privatized last year, including 5,348 apartments and 196 rooms in communal apartments, Sverdlovskstat reports. Earlier on, as many as 28,121 homes got privatized in 2013, 10,941 in 2014, 14,429 in 2015, and 7,093 in 2016. All in all, 1.327m housing units have been privatized in Sverdlovsk Region so far.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2018. Sverdlovsk Region Government’s debt decreased by 6.3% in January-February 2018, the government’s Information Policy Department reports. The constituency’s debt went from RUR 75.6bn on January 1, 2018 down to RUR 69.6bn on March 1, 2018. As to the debt’s structure, the share of marketable obligations dropped by 2.5%, while the share of debts related to loans provided from the federal funds reached 29.7%. Sverdlovsk Region’s Finance Ministry Galina Kulachenko announced earlier that the constituency’s debt would be fully paid off two years than initially

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 5, 2018. Prices went up by 0.9% on Yekaterinburg’s existing home prices compared with the beginning of the year, Ural Chamber of Real Estate’s analytical report states. Existing home prices rose by 0.3% in Yekaterinburg in the last twelve months. However, the average figures are down 11.5% against February 2015. Asking prices currently come to RUR 67,855 per m2 on average. In general, prices haven’t tended to decline this year so far, regardless of the housing type. Studio apartments grew 1.1% more expensive in the first two months of the year, with asking price at