VLADIVOSTOK, February 17. /TASS/. Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) won a competition to receive a subsidy from the Russian and Yakutia’s communications ministries for providing mobile communication to seven settlements in Yakutia’s Arctic and Northern districts with low-numbered populations, the company’s press service said on Friday.

"The subsidy will cover the cost and delivery of the equipment, as well as necessary works to organize cell communication in settlements Nychalah (112 people), Osoktoh (133 people), Barylas (98 people), Tokuma (147 people), Kytyl (199 people) and Yukagir (126 people)," the company said, adding cell communication will come to those settlements for the first time ever, and "the works are due to be completed in the second half of the current year."

Providing communication to districts of the kind often requires bigger investments because those are usually low populated areas in severe climate, where roads are not open all the year round.

"Most people in Russia now can barely imagine that to this moment there are settlements, where residents are unable not only to use the Internet, but even to make elementary phone calls," Yakutia’s communications minister Alexander Borisov said. "Providing communication with such districts requires bigger investments, and thus in such projects most important is the joint work of the state and of mobile communication operators."

In 2016, MTS won a grant for networks in Yakutia’s two settlements in the Arctic and Northern districts, where 154 and 155 people respectively live.