OJSC “Rostelecom” and other participants of International Telecomunication Consortium “Georgia-Russia” signed a contract with Alcatel-Lucent company modernizing and expanding the underwater fiber-optic cable system “Georgia-Russia”, Business Georgia reports.
The contract was signed by Director General of “Rostelecom” Kolpakov, Managing Director of DanTelco (Denmark) Harm Spliedt, Director General of FORTNET (Georgia) Ilya Injiya, Vice President of Alcatel-Lucent in Russia and CIS Alexander Tikhonov.
Modernisation of the cable system will be realized in two stages, ending in 2011. The first stage will increase traffic to 20Gbit/sec and after all works done the traffic will reach 60Gbit/sec. Modernizing will be realized using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) equipment.
In order to improve traffic the national segment of main circuit of “Rostelecom” and FORTNET will be powered up.
The underwater cable system “Georgia-Russia” is 400 km long, connecting Novorossiysk (Russia) and Poti (Georgia). It was built in 1999, becoming a fiber-optic gate between Europe and the Caucasus region. The system is owned and exploited by the International Consortium of “Rostelecom”, DanTelco and FORTNET. It is using SDH equipment, with 2.5Gbit/sec traffic, provided by Alcatel-Lucent. The system allows transfers all kinds of traffic (traditional telephony, data transfer, Internet, VOIP and other) and has outlets in the Caucasus region (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) using ground fiber-optic line provided by FORTNET; and Russia using outlets of Europe’s operators and South-East Asia as well as Russia’s neighbouring countries (Finland, Baltic countries, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China and others) using ground fiber-optic line provided by “Rostelecom”.
