Rodrigo Costa, CEO of ZON Multimédia, and Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO of FON announced today the launch of ZON@FON Free WiFi Community, a free WiFi service that will allow ZON Netcabo’s 400.000 customers to be part of the world’s largest WiFi Community.

The service is based on the revolutionary idea of a massive WiFi network, built through the contribution of individual customers to allow everyone, everywhere free access to the Internet.

From launch, ZON@FON will be Portugal’s largest WiFi network, with over 2.500 hotspots and part of the world’s largest wireless community, with over 250.000 hotspots worldwide.

The goal of the partnership is to dramatically increase the number of hotspots in the country, and contribute to the overall growth of the FON global community.

ZON@FON aims to have over 100.000 hotspots in Portugal, providing nearly ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet, further strengthening the offer of Zon Netcabo, Portugal’s broadband pioneer and innovation leader.

Anyone who uses a ZON@FON compatible router will host a hotspot that is based in a separate, secure channel, independent from their personal WiFi network.

ZON Netcabo will deploy access equipment with embedded ZON@FON functionality that will allow customers to host their own hotspot at no additional cost.

The internet connection provided by ZON Netcabo will carry all the hotspot’s traffic, but it will be separate from the user’s traffic and will not reduce the bandwidth from his internet access. This innovation was possible thanks to the superior speed and flexibility that cable networks offer, and was developed by FON and ZON exclusively for the ZON@FON Free WiFi Community.

The ZON@FON Free Internet Community will boost the usage of a whole new generation of devices, including: game consoles, GPS’s, cellular phones, PDA’s, I-Phones, in addition to traditional laptop computers.

About ZON Multimedia
With over 1,5 million TV, 400 thousand broadband and 200 thousand fixed line customers ZON Multimedia is Portugal’s leading provider of triple play offers. Originally a cable TV operator, ZON now offers multiple services across several platforms: cable, satellite, adsl and is now launching a Mobile Virtual Network Operator. Additionally, ZON is Portugal leading content distribution and cinema exhibition company, though its ZON Lusomundo business.

For more information, visit ZON at http://www.zon.pt

About FON
FON is the world’s largest WiFi community. FON’s mission is to stimulate the growth of WiFi around the world by creating a global community of “Foneros”. FON’s La Fonera routers have been designed to enable Foneros to share their home Internet access in a completely secure manner. Founded in February 2006 in Madrid, Spain, FON investors include Google, Skype, British Telecom, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Coral Capital Management and Excite Japan. Currently FON has close to 1 Million registered members in Europe, Asia and America.
For more information, visit FON at http://www.fon.com

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Since the launch of BT FON in October last year, 100,000 BT Total Broadband customers have come together to join the BT FON community, creating thousands of new Wi-Fi hotspots up and down the country.

In addition to the BT FON network in the UK, BT Total Broadband customers that join the BT FON community can access 3,000 BT Openzone hotspots at locations such as hotels, airports and railway stations, BT’s 13 UK wireless cities, and Fon’s global network of 190,000 hotspots. This provides BT Total Broadband customers with unrivalled Wi-Fi coverage across the UK and the rest of the world, allowing even more customers to experience the benefits of broadband both at home and when out and about.

Every BT customer that joins the BT FON community agrees to share a small portion of their home broadband connection, by opening up a separate, secure channel on their wireless router – the BT Home Hub. They are then able to use, free of charge, the BT FON hotspots of other members, BT Openzone hotspots, BT’s UK wireless cities, and Fon hotspots around the world.

Jon Hurry, Director Internet Services, Consumer, said: “It’s great to see BT Total Broadband customers joining forces to set up a people’s Wi-Fi network across the UK. BT has been instrumental in creating Broadband Britain, and we have built on that by calling upon entire communities to come together to create a Wi-Fi network that covers the country, driven entirely by local broadband users.

“We’ve already built extensive Wi-Fi coverage across the UK with BT Openzone and 13 Wireless Cities, but with more people signing up to BT FON everyday, Wi-Fi coverage in the UK is set to get better and better.”

Customers that sign up to BT Total Broadband Anywhere automatically join the BT FON community. Broadband Anywhere is the new all-inclusive broadband package from BT which offers customers a free, internet enabled Smartphone – the BT ToGo – for just £5 more per month than the price of BT Total Broadband Option 3. Today’s announcement means that Broadband Anywhere customers can enjoy unlimited access at even more wireless hotspots around the UK, allowing them to surf the web, email, make calls and text, both at home and out and about.

BT Total Broadband customers that are interested in joining the BT FON community can visit www.bt.com/btfon for more information about how to sign up. Customers can also visit the website to obtain a view of their local BT FON network. By simply entering a postcode, they can find the nearest BT FON or BT Openzone hotspots near to their home and to other places of interest. To encourage other people in their area to join the BT FON community and give their local Wi-Fi network an extra boost, promotional materials such as posters are also available to members to download from the website.

Customers who want to connect to broadband via BT FON while abroad can also visit the website to find Fon hotspots in other countries around the world.

From the summer, non-BT Total Broadband customers in the UK will also be able to join the BT FON community by purchasing FON’s Wi-Fi router, La Fonera.

How does this affect me?

This doesn't affect you. Your FON Spot visitors will now see this new signal name but nothing else has changed. Hopefully, you’ll even see an increase of visits! If you like, you can still the name to 'FON_nameyouwant', but we recommend that you to keep this new name or something similar. Instructions for changing the name are below.

How can I change the signal name?

There are two options…
Option 1

1. Connect to the MyPlace? signal. 2. Open your browser and type http://192.168.10.1 and the console will be loaded. The standard user name and password are both the word "admin". 3. Click on "Public WiFi?" in the menu and then you can change the name behind the 'FON_'. Save your changes and the signal name will change. Perhaps you will have to wait a bit and/or refresh the WiFi? manager of your device to see the new signal name.

Option 2

1. Log into your My FON user area at fon.com with your FON username (email-address/password). 2. Then go to "Configure your FON Router" and in the Settings tab enter a new "Public Signal" 3. Save the FON Spot personalization.

Changes may take up to 30 minutes to take effect on your FON Spot. If you want the change to happen immediately, reboot you La Fonera

The FON network currently covers approximately 230,000 Wi-Fi hot-spots around the world. Any internet user with unlimited broadband internet access is able to use FON’s Wi-Fi router, La Fonera. This router is a part of the global Wi-Fi network which can be used by anyone who has WiFi-enabled equipment for internet access. The FON shared wireless network is, therefore, created and expanded by the users installing La Fonera routers, which can also be used for connecting to personal networks. Users can manage the amount of bandwidth they share with others. Security of sharing is ensured via a separation of the public SSID from the private SSID by a firewall.

Coral/ Sistema Strategic Fund, the venture fund set up by Sistema, is one of the owners of the FON network. The world leading companies and investments funds, such as Google, British Telecom, Skype, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Excite Japan are among FON’s investment partners.

Under the terms of the agreement, Comstar and FON will jointly develop a Wi-Fi internet access network in the region of Russia and CIS. Initially, it will be created on the basis of the Comstar subscriber base in Moscow who will be able to easily join the worldwide FON network. Within the framework of the project, Comstar plans to establish 30,000 Wi-Fi access points in Moscow in 2008-2009 before expanding to other regions.

Broadband subscribers in Moscow will be able to rent La Fonera routers from Comstar, connect them to their ADSL or any other broadband internet access channel and join the FON network. The service will provide internet access at no extra cost in any places covered by FON, including the Comstar – FON network, using personal login and password details for the Comstar’s Moscow ADSL network.

The subscriber’s access point will also become “public” and might be used for internet access by both FON customers and others. The access of external clients to Comstar – FON network will be implemented with the help of pre-paid cards, SMS authorization and other means of receiving login and password details. The pre-paid cards will be sold by Comstar and FON through their sales channels.

Denis Muratov, Vice President, Head of Innovations and Science, commented: “We are very interested in global innovation projects which allow the introduction in Russia of new technologies and business development models, such as Comstar and FON’s joint project to develop the worldwide Wi-Fi network in the territory of Russia. We see the global expansion of services provided by our subsidiaries as a positive development.”

Sergey Pridantsev, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comstar UTS, commented: “Comstar is an exclusive operator-partner of the FON network in Russia. The project with FON is an important addition to our programme of broadband access development aimed at providing our subscribers with the opportunity to be always connected. The agreement with FON will allow the users to join the global network in many places around the world, and we will be able to provide services not only to our subscribers, but also to other users in Moscow. We are planning to expand our joint project with FON to the Russian regions.”

Martin Varsavsky, the founder and co-owner of FON Wireless Ltd., added: “FON is a unique network, and it is becoming exceedingly popular in many countries. We are very interested in cooperation with Comstar. This company is actively operating in the internet access market and is the market leader by subscribers in Moscow. Comstar is currently implementing a number of projects aimed at developing wireless internet access technologies, which is of great interest to us because of the potential opportunity for synergies with the FON network.”

***

For further information, please visit www.comstar-uts.com contact :

Comstar UTS
Masha Eliseeva
Tel: +7 985 997 0852
ir@comstar-uts.ru

Shared Value Limited
Matthew Hooper
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7321 5010
comstar@sharedvalue.net

Comstar UTS is the leading fixed-line telecommunications company in Moscow. Comstar provides voice, data, television and other value-added services to residential and corporate subscribers and operators, using its extensive backbone network and exclusive last mile access to 97% of Moscow households. The Company also offers communications services in five Russian regions, Armenia and Ukraine. Comstar had 695,000 broadband subscribers in Moscow. Comstar had 3.6 million residential subscribers in Moscow, including 651,000 residential broadband internet subscribers in Moscow, 102,000 corporate subscribers in Moscow, and approximately 448,000 regional and international subscribers, including 33,000 residential broadband internet subscribers and 102,000 residential pay-TV subscribers, at the end of 2007. Comstar generated US$ 1,562.4 million of revenues and a 42.5% OIBDA margin for the twelve months ended December 31, 2007. Comstar’s Global Depositary Receipts are listed on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: CMST).

FON is the world’s largest WiFi community. FON’s mission is to stimulate the growth of WiFi around the world by creating a global community of “Foneros”. FON’s La Fonera routers have been designed to enable Foneros to share their home Internet access in a completely secure manner. Founded in February 2006 in Madrid, Spain, FON investors include Google, Skype, British Telecom, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Coral Capital Management and Excite Japan. Currently FON has over 800,000 members in Europe, Asia and America and their Community is growing fast.

For more information, visit FON at www.fon.com or contact:

FON Wireless
Nina Wiegand
Tel:+34 677923029
Mail.: nina@fon.com

Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Comstar UTS. You can identify forward looking statements by terms such as “expect,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend,” “will,” “could,” “may” or “might”, the negative of such terms or other similar expressions. Comstar UTS wishes to caution that these statements are only predictions, and that actual events or results may differ materially. Comstar UTS does not intend to update these statements to reflect events and circumstances occurring after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Many factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in projections or forward-looking statements of Comstar UTS, including, among others, general economic conditions, the competitive environment, risks associated with operating in Russia, rapid technological and market change in the industries Comstar UTS operates in, as well as many other risks specifically related to Comstar UTS and its operations.

The Fonera 2.0 will be an open platform for developers to build their applications on top of, much like a hacked iPhone is now. An open platform is nothing without a community of developers, so we’re announcing today the launch of The Fonosfera, our development community program that will span not only the Fonera 2.0 but all Fon products. We know there are already many communities doing great things with our Foneras, adding new features and fixing bugs. The idea behind the Fonosfera is to bring all the development work the communities have been doing and will do in the future to any Fon user.

The Fonosfera will be a chance for all these communities to keep working independently, while contributing to the development of Fon products including the Fonera 2.0 and the applications that will run on it. The Fonosfera will provide a space for gathering and sharing between developers and to make their projects available to end users all around the world. It will include a framework with development and community tools such as svn, trac, forums, mailing list, wiki etc. We already picked a few communities that have proved they can do great things with the Fonera and sent them a test version of our Fonera 2.0.

The Fonera 2.0 will provide a USB connection and users will be able to plug any sort of USB device to it (as long as there’s software support in the firmware, and we invite developers to add support for any device they might think of). The Fonera 2.0 will provide out of the box the ability to connect a hard drive or pendrive to it, so you can access it on your local network and use it to store the contents your Fonera 2.0 will download from the Internet for you. Another interesting feature we are working on is the ability to connect an HSDPA modem to the USB port of the Fonera 2.0, to share an HSDPA connection on the move or where DSL is not available.

We are working hard to make the Fonera 2.0 as open as possible, and we are willing to take all the help the development community can bring to Fon and Foneros. Our users will still have to wait a few months to get their Foneras 2.0, but we’re sure it will be worth the wait.

I'm really exited we were able to raise so much money, and not just because I'm expecting a gigantic raise ;)! It's a challenging economic climate and an investment this large shows support for our business model. The leading investor in the round was the US Venture Capital arm of Sistema, Russia´s leading telco. Other investors in this C round include Google, British Telecom, Digital Garage and our founder and CEO Martin Varsavsky.

FON Hong Kong Caring Company Logo 2007-2008
It is with great pleasure that we announce that FON Hong Kong was awarded the Caring Company logo 2007-2008 for its efforts to give back to the community. FON’s operations and charitable activities, donations, and initiatives for the past year were reviewed by the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, who then awarded FON the Caring Company logo for achievements in all six Caring Company criteria (volunteering, employee friendly, employing the vulnerable, caring for the environment, mentoring, and giving).

The FON logo will be listed in “The Caring Company Commemorative Book 07/08”, jointly published by Hong Kong Economic Times and the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.

We would like to say a big thank you to The Boys’ and Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong for nominating us to the Caring Company scheme!

For more information, please visit the Caring Company web site.

The phone is on sale in Japan and comes with a WiFi router for use at home. When your not at home the Skype WiFi phone automatically connects to any FON Spot when one is detected. During the initial set up you enter your FON login and password and phone stores them and connects automatically in the future.

This is a great option for our Foneros living in Tokyo where we've reached 80% coverage! I use Skype regularly and recommend it!

Frequently Used Software:
･Word Processing / Work Productivity: OpenOffice works great!
･Browser: Firefox
･Music: I haven't found a single app. I'm using consistently. Suggestions welcome.

OS X:
I'm spending most of my time on my MacBook. (I'm sitting in a barber shop typing this post on it) I'm running 10.4.11 and thinking about upgrading to Leopard. Chris Hart of the Connecticut Macintosh Connection gave a good presentation on it last week. Yes, I attended my first Mac Users group meeting, let the Fanboy accusations fly.

Frequently Used Software:
･Word Processing / Work Productivity: NeoOffice is fantastic. Use it.
･Browser: Flock. It's based on Firefox but comes out of the box with lots of great features. A media bar shows my favorite Flickr tags and I can drag and drop photos to my friends on Facebook in the sidebar. (I haven't tested any other social networks)
･Music: Spotify. When I heard about Spotify my initial reaction was that I needed another music streaming service like I need a hole in my head. Then I tried it and my opinion changed. Most of the time I'm in front of my computer when I listen to music so it works fine for me. You can't move music from Spotify to any portable players. It's streaming only but the library of music is huge and the interface is clean. Spotify is still in private beta. Go sign up.
･Photos: Flickrbooth. It automatically uploads every photo taken with Photo Booth to my Flickr account. For me it's great because my 3 year old daughter loves to play with it and take photos of herself making silly faces. I can watch them roll in while I'm at work (errrr.....on break). I've read about cases where a laptop was stolen and they ended up with a nice stream of the thief in Flickr. I guess this could be considered a poor mans security device too!
･Security: Trucrypt. Good easy to use encryption program to keep your confidential documents safe. Like details of our next ...... never mind ;)
･Widgets: Airport Radar for displaying available wireless networks. Screenshot Plus for quick captures of the entire screen or a smaller desired area. IStat pro to monitor system performance.