April 16, 2009, Moscow: COMSTAR – United TeleSystems (COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), the leading supplier of integrated telecommunication solutions in Russia and the CIS, announces a trial launch of the service level control service for virtual private networks (VPN). Following a commercial launch of this service, COMSTAR-UTS will ensure a guaranteed service level for VPN subject to the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Currently, COMSTAR-UTS tests its hardware and software in the Moscow network. The service is scheduled to be commercially launched in the 2nd quarter of 2009, when testing will have been completed. On the first stage, COMSTAR-UTS will offer the service to its Moscow corporate subscribers; later on, this experience will be expanded to cover regional units.

Alexander Kirillov, Vice President for Technologies, says: “Introduction of higher standards of quality for services and customer support is one of the major tasks of COMSTAR-UTS in 2009. SLA service is one of the first steps to be taken to accomplish this task. In fact, this agreement allows subscribers to exercise independent control over an operator. COMSTAR-UTS will become a pioneer on this market, i.e. SLA systems have never been used in Russia before, while abroad services accompanied by this kind of agreement are being offered by leading operators, including AT&T, British Telecom, Orange, Sprint, TeliaSonera.”

The agreement to be concluded between a subscriber and the operator shall specify guaranteed limits for network reliability and quality of service indicators as well as operator’s responsibility in case of failure to perform its obligations. One of the most important principles of the agreement is assurance of continuous control of the indicators during service provision, as it enables timely identification of extraordinary events and prompt response.

QoS control is ensured by a dedicated soft- and hardware system. Presently, for the purpose of trial operation of the service wiSLA (well integrated SLA) system developed by Metrotek and BI Telecom (Russia) is used. wiSLA collects, accumulates and displays statistics related to quality and reliability of services being provided in compliance with SLA.

COMSTAR-UTS will provide subscribers with access to a wiSLA information portal that contains major reliability and QoS indicators by access point addresses. Access shall be provided via subscriber’s Personal Room on COMSTAR-UTS web portal with the use of a login and password.

At the same time, to forecast changes in service quality and take required measures to prevent quality loss, COMSTAR-UTS engineers use more detailed statistics with predefined QoS thresholds for NGN VPN. When a threshold value is detected wiSLA automatically notifies customer support engineers and controls quality of service recovery.

SLA concept fully complies with regulations of the Federal Law “On technical regulation” and TM Forum standards.