velcom kicks off GPON rollout in Belarus

Belarusian telco Mobile Digital Communications (MDC, or velcom as it is more commonly known), working in partnership with sister company Atlant Telecom following Telekom Austria Group’s (TAG’s) acquisition of the latter in 2016, has announced the launch of a large-scale rollout of high speed GPON broadband networks in Belarus. Having initially constructed a pilot project in Bobruisk, deploying GPON technology to more than 23,000 apartments, velcom is keen to extend the rollout country-wide, ultimately promising peak speeds of up to 10Gbps. The operator says that in the short term it aims to construct networks in several districts of Minsk, as well as in large regional centres. Commercial services are expected to come onstream in the capital in the second half of this year, it says. Current data speeds are capped to a less ambitious 100Mbps, it says, although technical director Christian Lax says that the move to GPON will allow for future scalability and the eventual availability of 10Gbps services.