Comstar Adds the 100,000th Pay-TV Subscriber in Southern Russia

Monday, January 21st, 2008
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MOSCOW — “COMSTAR – United TeleSystems” JSC (“Comstar” or “the Company”) (LSE:CMST), the leading integrated telecommunications operator in Russia and the CIS, today announced that the cable TV residential subscriber base of its Digital Telephone Networks South (“DTN”) subsidiary reached 100,000 by the end of 2007. DTN is the largest alternative telecommunications operator in the Southern Federal District of Russia.

DTN launched its “DTN-TV” branded pay-TV service in November 2005. The service is available in Rostov-on-Don, Azov, Aksay, Belaya Kalitva, Taganrog, Shakhty and other towns in the Rostov region.

DTN had already built a modern hybrid fiber-coaxial cable TV network and launched 50 multi-theme channels by November 2005, which included the most popular Russian-language satellite channels and principal free-to-air channels. DTN was the first cable TV operator in Rostov to offer a premium digital channel package in August 2007.

Comstar continues to actively develop its broadband pay-TV network and services in the Southern region of Russia, and it plans to increase the number of channels in its package offering from 80 to 100. Comstar also intends to provide high speed Internet access, based on the Metro Ethernet technology, in households covered by the DTN cable TV network, and to launch city-scale cable TV networks in Krasnodar, Novocherkassk and Donetsk (the Rostov region). In addition, the Company plans to launch an IP-TV service to residential subscribers in the first quarter of 2008 and has already soft-launched the service in Rostov-on-Don in October 2007.

Viktor Koresh, Vice President for Regional Development, commented: “We have been working in the pay-TV market in the Southern region for the last two years and the addition of the 100,000th subscriber for DTN-TV as a key milestone. This development is in line with our goal to maintain our leading position in the telecommunications market by providing our customers with a broad range of high-quality communications services.”