OREANDA-NEWS. December 03, 2009. December 3, 2009, Moscow. COMSTAR – United TeleSystems (JSC COMSTAR-UTS, LSE: CMST), the leading integrated telecom services operator in Russia and the CIS announced, that the number of subscribed Russian users of COMSTAR FON Wi-Fi network reached 2,000, with a total number of FON hot spots being as many as 5,000 in Moscow.

COMSTAR-UTS and FON Wireless Limited launched wireless broadband Internet access joint service using Wi-Fi for subscribers of STREAM, the largest Moscow provider, at the end of 2008. COMSTAR FON network is a Russian segment of the global "social" Wi-Fi FON network, the subscribers of which can freely use the access points of each other. To arrange a FON access point in Moscow one just has to lease a La Fonera Wi-Fi router from COMSTAR operator for as little as 30 rubles a month and to register it in the network via a special application form at http://www.fon.com. All active hot spots which are accessible at a present moment shall be displayed on an interactive map of the project network available at: http://maps.fon.com.

 “As of today, COMSTAR FON network has 2,000 subscribers, but its real coverage is much more. If in the past the Moscow map of FON network displayed only those routers which were registered by the users themselves; now all hot spots accessible for the registered users of FON network are visualized, including the foreign ones. It is vitally important for further growth of the network, as the more active points of access it comprises, the more interest for the new subscribers to be connected and to register their router it makes; having opened public access to them for other members of Wi-Fi FON community, with most of them having free access to similar points of access in those cities where FON network is operable now. Which is more than 500 000 hot spots worldwide,” Alexander Gorbunov, vice-president for Strategy and Development of COMSTAR-UTS said. “We expect to offer our subscribers of broadband access in Moscow a special version of ZTE W300 modem with a built in FON feature in the nearest future,” he added.