Rostelecom taps Alca-Lu for overhaul of North-South Transit route

Russian national operator Rostelecom has confirmed that it has selected French/US equipment vendor Alcatel-Lucent to increase the speed and capacity of its optical backbone network, which is responsible for transferring high capacity data from Europe through Russia to the Middle East. The two companies will establish a super-fast ‘100G’ connection covering 3,500km of Russian territory. Alca-Lu describes 100G as ‘a pillar of the Converged Backbone Transformation (CBT) solution – a key element of the Alcatel-Lucent High Leverage Network (HLN) architecture’. The solution is said to optimise the overall efficiency of an operator’s transport network, maximising bandwidth capacity whilst reducing network complexity. The boost in network capacity will effectively provide enough bandwidth to support the streaming of more than 15,000 high-definition TV channels simultaneously on each wavelength. As part of the overhaul, Alca-Lu will provide Rostelecom with its 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS), which unites optical transport network (OTN) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology on a single platform.