UMS taps Alokabank for credit line

Russian-Uzbek joint venture Universal Mobile Systems (UMS) has applied to Uzbek bank Alokabank for a loan, news portal Tdaily.ru reports. The value of the loan was not made public. UMS is a 50.01/49.99 joint venture between Russia’s Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and the government of Uzbekistan and represents the Russian firm’s return to the market after its previous Uzbek subsidiary had its licence controversially revoked in mid-2012. The new operator plans to launch technical trials by 1 November this year with commercial services to begin on 1 December.