ATN Aterian Plc

RNS Number:5401I
Atlantic Telecom Group PLC
15 August 2001

                                                    ATLANTIC TELECOM GROUP PLC

                                                                 AGM STATEMENT

                                                                15 August 2001

At the Annual General Meeting of Atlantic Telecom Group PLC held today, the
Executive Chairman, Graham J Duncan, made the following statement:

"As I indicated in the preliminary statement at the end of June, this has been
a difficult year for the telecoms sector - one of the most challenging capital
market environments I have seen in nearly 30 years in business.

"However, Atlantic has made substantial progress over the past 12 months in
transforming itself from a company operating in four Scottish cities with a
target market of only 41,000 business customers, to a European operator able
to provide broadband services to a potential 1.3 million small and medium
sized businesses.

"These achievements are of small comfort to many shareholders who have seen
this growth reversed in terms of our equity and bond prices. Creating better
value for stakeholders remains the absolute priority for the board, and we
continue to work closely with our advisors to improve this situation.

"We will continue to ensure we deliver upon our operational and financial
targets, as we have consistently done to date. We now have 570 DSL
co-locations in Germany and have recently launched services in the
Netherlands. With more than half of our co-locations in continental Europe now
fully active our priority is to connect customers and generate revenues from
our network assets.

"I am pleased that we have seen a substantial improvement of over 35% in
EBITDA losses for the fourth quarter, to 31st March 2001. This reflects, at
least in part, some of the cost reduction exercises that have been
implemented. In addition, we have announced the recent sale of our indirect
residential business, which effectively transformed a loss-making part of the
business into a profitable one. This will enable us to concentrate our
investment and efforts on our core business, while maintaining a valuable
revenue stream. Our quarterly results to 30 June 2001 will be issued at the
end of August.

"Our operating statistics for the first quarter to June 30 2001, issued on 26
July, showed that this strategy is providing tangible evidence of success, and
we continue to achieve growth in our target markets while keeping a close
control on costs."

                                     Ends

For further information, please contact:
Susy Atkinson, Director of Corporate Affairs                     07808 397374
                                                                 01224 454409

Patrick Toyne Sewell/Sara Batchelor, Citigate Dewe Rogerson      020 7638 9571

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