18 March 2009, Moscow. COMSTAR – United Telesystems (COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), the leading provider of integrated telecommunication services in Russia and the CIS, announces the launch of the Moscow-Kiev-Frankfurt backbone. Transmission network capacity is 10 Gbps.

The new backbone connects the Ukrainian part of COMSTAR-UTS’ network with European points of presence (Frankfurt am Main) and Russia (Moscow).

Alexander Kirillov, Technology Vice President of COMSTAR-UTS, notes “COMSTAR-UTS is actively developing its backbones. Today we also use an Internet backbone connecting Russian and international parts of the Internet access network through the countries of Scandinavia, but we consider the new backbone as more reliable one. Currently the Moscow-Kiev-Frankfurt backbone meets the demands of our affiliated company in Ukraine, but in the future it will play more and more essential role in the traffic transmission for COMSTAR-UTS.”

COMSTAR-UTS is going to enhance the Moscow-Kiev-Frankfurt backbone up to 40 Gbps and to make it one of the core lines connecting COMSTAR’s telecom network with the Internet.

Today subscribers of COMSTAR-UKRAINE, affiliated company of COMSTAR-UTS, have a direct high-speed access to the Russian part of the Internet. COMSTAR-UKRAINE can promptly deploy reliable high-speed corporate communication networks between the Russian and Ukrainian divisions of its customers. Besides, thanks to the new backbone, quality of long-distance and international telecommunication services provided by COMSTAR-UTS has essentially grown.