COLT Telecom and SmartNumbers announce partnership to provide Europe-wide advanced business telephony solutions On Demand.

London, England. June 2004

SmartNumbers, a leading provider of advance business communications, today announced a partnership with COLT Telecom to extend the sale and support of SmartNumbers advanced business telephony solutions across Europe. Under this partnership, Colt will embrace the SmartNumbers brand to extended the SmartNumbers service for customers needing to lower the costs of integrating telephone and messaging services across countries and continents.

Businesses can now publish national and free-phone telephone numbers, country by country, that will connect to an individual or teams of specialists who can be anywhere. Balancing calls across countries reduces overall staff numbers, improves customer care by ensuring an answer, and sometimes enables a company to close a local office, whilst retaining the perception of a local presence. Staff can move from office to office, or even work at home, knowing that their telephone services such as call diverts, hunt groups and voice mail will follow them wherever they are.

Colt’s unique European network enabled SmartNumber’s service, previously only available to customers in the UK, to publish numbers right across Europe. “We were impressed at the outset with the professionalism of the COLT people and by the quality and capabilities of the COLT network. With SmartNumbers provided over the COLT network, we can provide our business class telephony and messaging services with a true European footprint. Companies can now publish help lines, for example, in Denmark or Switzerland which connect callers to the first available specialist who may be in the office or at home right across the world.” said Geoffrey Paterson, Chairman of SmartNumbers.

“We welcome all opportunities to create additional value added services for our customers. Our investment in a single network across Europe has enabled SmartNumbers to extend their service to customers right across our European footprint” said Andy Slater, Colt director of marketing for multinational customers.

About COLT

COLT Telecom Group plc is a leading pan-European provider of business communications services. COLT has over 15,000 network services and eBusiness customers. The company owns an integrated 20,000 kilometre network that directly connects over 9,000 buildings in 32 major cities in 13 countries augmented with a further 27 points of presence across Europe and New York, USA, and 11 Internet Solution Centres. COLT supplies customers across the full spectrum of industry, service and government sectors with unrivalled end-to-end network security, reliability and service. COLT Telecom Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (CTM.L) and NASDAQ (COLT). Information about COLT and its products and services can be found on the web at www.colt.net