MTS will help the Ministry of Foreign Affairs inform Russians who find themselves in emergency situations abroad

The largest Russian mobile operator MTS, together with the Russian Foreign Ministry, launched an information system for emergency situations outside Russia. The new service for informing subscribers is free, RIA Novosti reports.

As the MTS company reported, in the event of an emergency on the territory of any foreign country, the operator will send out an SMS with the necessary emergency information to all its subscribers registered in the network of the corresponding foreign roaming partner.

In particular, such messages will contain contact details of organizations that can provide Russian citizens with the necessary assistance, the operator said in a statement.

At the same time, Russian overseas institutions will receive information from the operator about the number of subscribers located in the emergency zone.

Until now, MTS subscribers, when registering a SIM card in the network of a foreign operator, received three SMS from their home operator with information about roaming services.

Now there will be four such SMS: by agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, subscribers will receive telephone numbers and web addresses of embassy and consular offices of the Russian Federation in a particular country. This information will be sent to the subscriber even if there is no emergency situation in the country.

MTS has about 71 million subscribers in Russia. MTS does not disclose the share of its clients who used the international roaming service during the year. According to statistics from Rostourism, the number of Russians who traveled abroad on tourist trips in 2010 amounted to 12.6 million people, which is 32% more than in 2009.

The Russian cellular operator MegaFon, second in terms of subscriber base volume, does not comment on the possibility of contacts with the Russian Foreign Ministry for a similar emergency service for its subscribers. Another Big Three operator, VimpelCom (Beeline brand), does not rule out the appearance of such a service in the future.