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GTS Central Europe to be acquired

Bucharest December 22, 2007 – GML’s subsidiary, the shareholder of GTS Central Europe ("GTS CE"), has entered into an agreement to sell 100% of the shares in GTS CE to a consortium of private equity funds, led by Columbia Capital, M/C Venture Partners and Innova Capital (the "Consortium"). The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2008.

GTS CE operates a group of alternative telecom service providers in Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Its focus is primarily on the business customer segment. In addition GTS CE provides service to customers in Ukraine, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia. GTS CE expects to achieve consolidated revenues of approximately EUR 393m and EBITDA of approximately EUR 69m in 2007.

The Consortium is a group of private equity investors led by Columbia Capital and M/C Venture Partners, both US-based groups focused on investing in the telecommunication and information technology sectors, and Innova Capital, one of the leading private equity groups focused on Central Europe. Other members of the Consortium include Bessemer Venture Partners and other selected private equity investors.

ABN AMRO Corporate Finance Ltd. was sole financial advisor to the Consortium and KBC Securities acted as a sole financial advisor to the Seller. Squire Sanders & Dempsey LLP acted as legal counsel to the Consortium and Clifford Chance acted as counsel to GML.

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with investors of such international profile and reputation. We believe the GTS CE will benefit significantly from the telecommunication experience and capabilities of the new shareholders in order to further cement GTS’s position as the leading alternative provider of communications solutions in Central and Eastern Europe." commented Tamas Polgar, CEO of GTS CE.

Krzysztof Krawczyk, Partner at Innova Capital commented: "We view GTS CE as a highly attractive opportunity given its dense metro and long haul fibre footprint which is unique in the Central and Eastern European region and offers attractive growth prospects. This acquisition is a significant investment for all the leading members of the Consortium and we are looking forward to further developing this asset."

About GTS Central Europe
GTS Central Europe (GTS CE) is a multi-layered infrastructure based provider of integrated telecommunications solutions for those countries of Central and Eastern Europe lying between Frankfurt and Istanbul. In November 2007 GTS CE was awarded for the second time as “Best Central and Eastern European Wholesale Provider” at the annual European Telecommunications Congress held in Amsterdam. Using its own regional fibre network GTS CE provides fixed voice, data, IP (Internet Protocol), MPLS and broadband services primarily to business customers as well as services to other telecoms carriers, mobile operators and providers of content. GTS CE’s primary countries of operation are Czech, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with network extensions and local partnerships into the neighbouring countries of the Bulgaria, Croaţia, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine.
For further information, please visit www.gtsce.com.
www.gtsce.com.

About GTS Telecom
ISO 9001 certified, GTS Telecom delivers to the business market the most reliable and stable telecommunications solutions in Romania, managed up to the connection interface of the client (end-to-end). The average SLA level of the communications solutions delivered to clients in 2006 was 99.74%.
Positioned as Business AcceleratorTM, GTS Telecom delivers a full range of carrier services, corporate networking solutions based on TCP/IP, X.25 and Frame Relay, Internet services, telephony and hosting.
The company owns and operates its own fibre-optic cross-border network of 47.5Gbit/sec in Oradea with backup connections in Arad interconnecting the company with GTS Central Europe infrastructure. The 25Gbit/sec national network has ring topology and connects 19 PoPs. In Bucharest GTS Telecom owns and operates own fiber optic metropolitan network of 2.5 Gbit/sec and the 5.8GHz radio network entirely covering Bucharest.
For more information please contact

Cristian Copilău
GTS Telecom
Marcom Manager
[t] 031-2.200.200; 021-4.100.100
[f] 031-2.200.222; 021-410.3883
[m] 0740-55.44.04
[e] cristian.copilau@gtstelecom.ro
[i] www.gtstelecom.ro

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