April 24, 2009, Moscow, Tyumen: COMSTAR – United TeleSystems (COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), the largest provider of integrated telecommunication services in Russia and the CIS, announces that Regional Technical Center (RTC), the leading alternative operator in the Tyumen Region, a member of COMSTAR-UTS, has set upon implementation of an action plan to optimize COMSTAR-UTS customer support system.

As part of a comprehensive program focused on an increased quality of service and standardized customer service in COMSTAR-UTS’ companies, RTC has made a decision to create a single call center. This will ensure an increased speed of call handling and reduced costs related to support of the existing subscriber base. To do this, COMSTAR-UTS is establishing a single centralized contact center in the Tyumen Region to provide technical and information support, and consulting services as well as to promote sales through telemarketing.

RTC will implement a centralized customer service system in several steps within the period from April to August 2009. The first step envisages centralization of technical support of broadband Internet users. Then, fixed telephony subscribers will be served the same way. In April, the contact center started to provide remote services to Internet users of the RTC Priobsky branch and Tyumen Sales & Service Center. By September 2009, centralization of customer support in all cities of COMSTAR-UTS presence in the Tyumen Region is scheduled to be completed.

Vladimir Alaev, Director General of RTC, notes: “Promotion of telecom services under the new brand, COMSTAR, is impossible without systematic and continuous arrangement of events related to optimization of the customer service. The single call processing center will enable reduction of the load on technical support employees in branches and allocation of additional resources to eliminate possible hardware faults. Thus, we are enhancing flexibility of call routing and reducing the fault recovery time. New customer service methods will enable efficient service quality management in all levels of the network hierarchy.”

Andrey Boyarinov, Commercial Director of RTC, notes: “Up to now, each branch had its own technical support system, which resulted in different service quality. With new service system, all issues related to remoteness of our branches will be settled. Technical support will be provided to customers of all branches based on single quality standards of COMSTAR-UTS.”