RIGA - The council of directors of Lattelekom, the fixed-line telecommunication leader, decided last week to complete the digitalization of the country's telecommunication network within the next three years.
The company reported that some 30 million lats (44.7 million euros) would be invested in the modernization of networks in distant rural areas.
Over 90 percent of Lattelekom's phone lines are already hooked up to the digital network, the company said.
Gundars Strautmanis, Lattelekom president, said that these investments would cause no problem for the company, as it has in the past managed investments three times the size in a single year, whereas this 30 million lat project would take place over a period of three years.
Strautmanis added that the decision was made as the 1994 umbrella agreement between the government and TeliaSonera was still in effect, according to which the investor had agreed to fully digitalize Latvia's telecommunication network.
He said that the issue was not linked to the dividends dispute between the company's shareholders - the government and Scandinavia-based TeliaSonera, -though experts suspect it was part of a compromise deal.
The council of directors and 49 percent shareholder TeliaSonera have previously stated they wanted 42 million lats of the company's profits to be paid out in dividends, while the government has proposed that only half that sum be paid to company owners and the rest be used for modernizing rural networks.
