January 31, 2002 NIFTY Corporation

Subsequent Progress of the Global Internet Alliance -Planning of a Multi-lateral Roaming Network-

Tokyo, January 31, 2002 - The Global Internet Alliance (GIA), formed by seven major Internet service providers (ISPs) in October 2000, have started services of international "Direct Roaming", enabling seamless, less expensive roaming using the access points of participating GIA members and international e-commerce service, the "Japan Shop", which introduces products offered by NIFTY's merchant partners within Samsungmall's (Korea) web site. @nifty International Web Site : http://www.nifty.com/international/ The GIA holds its third General Assembly January 30 - 31, 2002, in Sao Paulo, Brazil and discusses plans to expand its international roaming network. The event also features the introduction of new ISP members Tiscali(Italy)*(1) and BTopenworld (UK)*(2). By their introduction, the GIA is covering 15 European countries*(3) and South Africa and represents more than 39million subscribers. The "Direct Roaming" service was started by connecting @nifty with each of Unitel On-line(Korea), Netvigator(Hong Kong), SingNet(Singapore) and UOL(Brazil). The GIA members represent countries such as Brazil, USA, Italy and UK, which qualified for the upcoming World Cup of Soccer held jointly in Korea and Japan this May. Therefore, the GIA plans to expand the "Direct Roaming" service so that, in addition to the connection mentioned above, GIA member subscribers from Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Korea etc. may use @nifty access points in Japan (similar arrangements are planned to be aimed at on Unitel On-line access points in Korea) enhancing convenience of connecting to the internet in a less expensive manner. During the General Assembly, a press conference was held on the 30th with representatives from each GIA member ISP attending.

The GIA member ISPs are as follows (In alphabetical order of their service names. * are new ISP members) *BTopenworld (British Telecommunications Plc, UK) EarthLink (EarthLink,Inc., USA) Netvigator (Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited, Hong Kong) @nifty (NIFTY Corporation, Japan) SingNet (SingNet PTE Ltd, Singapore) *Tiscali (Tiscali S.p.A., Italy) T-Online (T-Online International AG, Germany) Unitel (UDS Co., Ltd., Korea) UOL (Universo Online Ltda, Brazil) *(1) About Tiscali CEO:Renato Soru Head Office: Cagliari, Italy Tiscali S.p.A. (Nuovo Mercato, Milan: TIS; Nouveau Marche, Paris: 005773) is the leading pan-European Internet Communication Company, with local operations in 14 European countries as well as in South Africa. As at 30 September 2001, Tiscali had 7.56 million active users and a daily Internet traffic of 130 million minutes. With 14.5 million unique visitors to the Tiscali portal in September 2001, Tiscali is confirmed as Europe's leading web property (Source MMXI). URL http://www.tiscali.com *(2) About BTopenworld CEO: Alison Ritchie Head Office: London, England BTopenworld is one of the top three ISPs of UK. They provide broadband and narrowband access and have 1.69 million subscribers. BTopenworld is a division within British Telecommunications Plc. URL http://www.btopenworld.com/ *(3) 15 European Countries covered by the GIA Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK. * All company names mentioned may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and are used for identification purposes only.

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