Now Russia is quite advanced in the use of contemporary means of communication.

Internet
In major cities there are many Internet cafes (many of which are used by children as 21st century arcades!). Hotels and business centers also have Internet access available by the hour. Many provide additional services such as printing, transferring data from memory cards to CDs, and so on.

Cell Phones
You may freely use the GSM standard cell phones. There is coverage in most of the European part of Russia. Please remember that the standard frequency in Russia is the same as in Europe - GSM 900/1800, NOT 1900 (the U.S. standard). If you have a three-band phone (such as the Motorola 7389), you’ll just need to reset the band when you arrive.

Another option is to buy or rent a European standard cell phone. Voicestream and Nextel have roaming agreements with the Megafon and MTS networks, which cover most of the European part of Russia. You may use NW GSM in St. Petersburg and Sonic Duo in Moscow, which are the part of Megafon group. Both of these providers issue GSM light cards, which are numbers without a monthly fee or a contract, useful for a short trip to Russia. Currently the St. Petersburg card will not work in Moscow and vice versa. Please keep in mind that in Russia the owner of the cell pays for the call, not the calling party. Also no credit is given - you’ll have to pre-pay all your phone calls.

You may use you hotel or home telephone to make the calls. You’ll be billed for those when you check out of the hotel, or in case of the home telephone the bill is issued twice a month. Calling from the hotel will be about 50-200% more expensive than from a regular telephone. In most of the places all local calls are free, including those to the mobiles from this city. Because of this the good idea may be using the IP telecommunications card, which can be found in every telecommunications shop. The card will give you the substantial discount for the long distance calls.

Pay Phones
Also there are a lot of the pay phones in the center of cities. You can’t use coins for those - a card with an embedded chip is needed. You can buy it on every newsstand. Public phones in the hotels may take the credit cards.

Phoning from Home
The international calling code for Russia is 7 and the area code for Moscow is 095. To dial from abroad you dial 00, followed by 7, the local area code 95 and the local number. If you wish to call abroad from Moscow, you dial 810, followed by the international calling code for your particular country, the local area code and then the local number. It is worth noting that you also need to drop the first zero from the local area code for both types of call.