COMSTAR-DIRECT Selects TANDBERG Television's Video Compression for IPTV Network Extension

Business Wire, March 5, 2007

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- TANDBERG Television (OSE:TAT) today announced that COMSTAR-DIRECT, Russia's largest broadband service provider, has once again selected industry leading TANDBERG encoding and monitoring solutions for a major network expansion. COMSTAR-DIRECT, located in Moscow, and part of the COMSTAR UTS group (LSE:CMST), provides broadband services to more than 360,000 Russians. COMSTAR-DIRECT already has over 83,000 double-play (broadband internet and IPTV) customers and is implementing an extensive multimedia project to provide a multi-channel and on-demand TV offering with a broad range of programming - from local channels to documentaries, through news and sports to music and movies.

Keen to maintain its market lead within an increasingly competitive market, COMSTAR-DIRECT believes that high quality of TV content is a key factor for attracting and retaining consumers to its TV service. Following extensive trials and product tests from multiple vendors, COMSTAR-DIRECT chose to deploy TANDBERG Television's market leading MPEG-2 encoders because of their industry leading performance and their easy upgrade path to MPEG-4 AVC, which the operator intends to use as it introduces HDTV in the future.

"Getting our IPTV network infrastructure right is very important as we extend and upgrade our service. Moscow is becoming an increasingly competitive broadband marketplace and we have found that TANDBERG Television's solutions provide us with best-of-breed technologies that enable us to cost-effectively meet our quality objectives. TANDBERG Television's E5710 encoders have shown superior picture quality at low bit-rates for MPEG-2, and its advanced systems provide us with flexibility and scalability for the future," says Victor Belov, Chief Technical Officer at COMSTAR-DIRECT.

COMSTAR-DIRECT launched its ADSL based broadband services in the autumn of 2004 with TANDBERG Television's IPTV head-end solutions. For this latest network expansion, COMSTAR-DIRECT is also implementing TANDBERG Television's control and monitoring software - nCompass 5.0 - which provides COMSTAR-DIRECT with the ability to have a clear view of what is happening throughout its system.

"We are proud that our IPTV solutions have been chosen for a second time by COMSTAR-DIRECT. The company has been bringing innovative new services to the Russian entertainment market for the past 3 years. We are pleased that our expertise and award-winning technology have played an important part in the development of COMSTAR-DIRECT's IPTV service and look forward to working closely together in the future to introduce exciting new offerings such as HDTV," says Pawel Sulikowski, sales director of TANDBERG Television.

About COMSTAR-DIRECT

Created in 1993, company is now the leading Moscow Internet-provider. COMSTAR-DIRECT is a part of Sistema Telecom group that manages telecommunication assets of Sistema corporation - the largest consumer services private sector company in Russia and the CIS with over 60 million customers.

COMSTAR-DIRECT provides wideband ADSL access to Internet for private and corporate customers, IPTV, IP-telephony, hosting, dial-up access and other services. By the end of 2006 company has 360,000 wideband subscribers including more than 83,000 IPTV (double-play) subscribers. Main shareholders of COMSTAR-DIRECT are COMSTAR-UTS (LSE:CMST), one of the Russia's largest telecom operators, with 51,8% shares and Sistema Mass Media with 48,1%. For more information, please visit www.comstar-direct.ru.

About TANDBERG Television

Whether it's advanced compression systems, on-demand or interactive television, TANDBERG Television (TAT.OL) delivers the technology and expertise that is moving digital video forward. The company's award-winning solutions are used by the world's leading network operators, broadcasters and content owners to deliver new viewer experiences and advertising opportunities. With a broad suite of open, standards-based products, TANDBERG Television offers the highest quality digital TV solutions including IPTV, HDTV, video-on-demand, advertising on-demand, and interactive TV applications to customers in the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa. For more information, please visit www.tandbergtv.com.