December 2, 2010, Moscow: COMSTAR – United TeleSystems (COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), the leading provider of integrated telecom solutions in Russia and the CIS, has completed transfer of the Internet traffic in the largest cities of the Group’s presence to a fiber optic transport network of MTS Group (Mobile TeleSystems, NYSE: MBT).

Switching of capacities from leased lines used by COMSTAR for the most part of its Internet traffic in these cities to the MTS backbone has been completed by November 2010. COMSTAR and MTS continue to switch user traffic in other cities of COMSTAR presence, including those where telecom services are provided by Multiregion, MTS subsidiary managed by COMSTAR-Regions.

“One of the trends of COMSTAR and MTS integration is mutual link utilization both on transport and metro network levels. Now we are carrying out a large-scale project to switch our traffic to MTS backbones which enables us to optimize costs, enhance reliability and further increase data speeds for our subscribers,” says Victor Koresh, Vice President for Regional Development of COMSTAR-UTS, Director General of COMSTAR-Regions.

MTS Group has its own large fiber optic backbone and is present in all federal districts of the Russian Federation. An overall length of the MTS backbone, including the network of Evrotel acquired in 2009, makes about 43,000 km. The network is built based on the DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology and covers all important centers of the Russian Federation.

COMSTAR-UTS has also switched its Internet traffic to the fiber optic transport network of MTS Group for Moscow-Saint Petersburg-Stockholm and Moscow-Kiev routes.