02/12/2004   PeterStar Among Top Ten Largest Internet Providers of Russia

ZAO PeterStar — one of the leaders of the telecommunications market of the Northwest Region — has become the first Saint Petersburg Internet Provider obtained the status LARGE in RIPE NCC (a status of large Internet provider on the RF territory). Thus, the company has been included in the top ten largest Russian Internet providers.

This status was assigned based on the information of RIPE NCC — one of the four worldwide organizations distributing the Internet’s address space in Europe.

The company launched the provision of Internet services in the middle of 2001 on the basis of its own node. At present PeterStar uses 100 thousand IP addresses. The monthly volume of incoming Internet traffic exceeds 30 terabytes. The company actively develops on the market of home Internet users as well, and is among the three leaders of Saint Petersburg. The number of activated Internet cards issued by the company amounts to approx. 90 thousand per month. In September of 2004 the capacity of one of the PeterStar backbones toward foreign resources was expanded up to the STM-4 level. The aggregate capacity of external backbones exceeds 2Gbps. Companies NTTE-Verio, Telia London and the Russian operator RTComm.ru are the suppliers of external resources. PeterStar possesses its own Internet nodes and direct access to Internet traffic exchange points in London (LINX London), New York, SPB-IX and MSK-IX.

According to the opinion of PeterStar specialists, this new network status will allow the company to more actively develop on the Internet market, obtain more advantageous conditions for resource using, efficiently control the prime cost of the services rendered, as well as maintaining a larger “margin of safety” when reducing Internet access tariffs for its users.

ABOUT COMPANY:

ZAO PeterStar is one of the leaders of the telecommunications market of the Northwest Region of Russia, specializing in the provision of telephony, Internet and data services. From 1992 the company has invested over $150m in the construction of its network, having materially contributed to the city telecommunications infrastructure development. The PeterStar transport network is the second city network in terms of capacity, yielding to OAO North-West Telecom, PTN’s affiliate. PeterStar possesses the largest fiber network in the city which length is approaching 2000 km. The total number of connected PeterStar telephone lines makes approx. 100 thousand. PeterStar occupies a 70% share of the telephone operators market among alternative operators. During five years PeterStar has been rendering social support to the city, serving the city infrastructure of the Vissilievski Island telephone network under the tariffs of the OAO North-West Telecom affiliate (PTN).

ZAO PeterStar is the owner of the 100% stake in the telecommunications company Baltic Communications Ltd. (BCL), 100% stake in the Petersburg Internet provider Comset, 80% stake in OAO Pskov City Telephone Network, as well as the 10% stake in OAO ADM-Murmansk.

Press Service of ZAO PeterStar
Alina Karpichenko, karpichenko@office.peterstar.com
(812) 329 9053, 962 3582