<item><hi format=bold>Telecommunications:</hi> telephone service is poor, with only about 17 telephones for each 100 persons in urban areas and 7.6 telephones per 100 persons in rural areas; of the approximately 2.2 million telephones, Almaty has 184,000; broadcast receivers—TVs 4,750,000, radios 4,088,000, radio receiver systems with multiple speakers for program diffusion 6,082,000; international traffic with other former USSR republics and China carried by landline and microwave, and with other countries by satellite and through 8 international telecommunications circuits at the Moscow international gateway switch; satellite earth stations—INTELSAT and Orbita (TV receive only); new satellite ground station established at Almaty with Turkish financial help (December 1992) with 2500 channel band width