Moscow, Russia – January 27, 2010 – “COMSTAR – United TeleSystems” JSC (“Comstar” or “the Group”) (LSE: CMST), the largest integrated telecommunications provider in Moscow and 69 Russian cities, today announced that its residential broadband internet business in the Russian regions added 57 thousand subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2009 and a total of 122 thousand subscribers during the whole year 2009^[1]. The business therefore had more than 400 thousand subscribers by the end of 2009.

Sergey Pridantsev, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comstar UTS, commented: “We are currently present in Moscow and 69 other Russian cities, and our objective is to expand our operations to cover over 200 cities with populations of over 100 thousand people. We are planning to launch new regional projects and to offer attractive service offerings to local customers in as short a time period as possible. This development will be supported by the modernisation of our networks and the synergies resulting from the integration with MTS, which include capitalising on our combined backbone communication networks and utilising the powerful MTS brand.”

Comstar has 2 million active pay-TV subscribers in the Russian regions, including over 1.6 million cable TV subscribers and 360 thousand social subscribers, as well as 400 thousand voice subscribers.

^[1] 278 thousand subscribers as at January 1, 2009 incl. STREAM-TV