Telecommunications

In 1921 Mongolia nationalized postal and telecommunications services - then Russian-owned, Chinese-owned, and Danish-owned - and placed them under the Postal and Telegraph Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With Soviet assistance, Mongolia extended telephone and telegraph lines between 1923 and 1930, inaugurated motorized intercity mail delivery in 1925, and began radiobroadcasting in 1934 and television broadcasting in 1967. Since the 1920s, Soviet aid - including technical assistance, investment, and training - enabled Mongolia to create national postal and telecommunications networks as well as to establish international communications links. In the 1980s, the Ministry of Communications, which ran the postal and the telecommunications systems, emphasized expanding and upgrading the telecommunications services and facilities to create a unified communications system. This system included telephone, telegraph, telex, radio, and television; it still relied on cooperation and assistance from the Soviet Union and other Comecon countries.

In 1985 Mongolia's telephone, telegraph, and telex system included 420 postal, telephone, and telegraph offices; 28,000 kilometers of telephone and telegraph lines; and 49,300 telephones. The Ministry of Communications was working to introduce a unified digital data-transmission system, to upgrade the telephone system to an automatic-switching network, to increase the length of multiplex telephone channels, and to establish a land-based mobile telephone network using earth satellite facilities. Radio-relay lines provided intercity and international, direct-dialing telephone links. Telex lines connected Ulaanbaatar with Irkutsk and Moscow.