Nortel has had a long-term strategic relationship with Golden Telecom since 1993 when a Nortel optical solution was put into operation for Golden Telecom in Moscow. Since then, Nortel has continuously supported the Golden Telecom optical network, helping it to handle growth in network traffic and deliver the latest communications services including secure, affordable, voice and broadband Internet services.

Golden Telecom’s next-generation optical network will provide transport networking for both TDM and Ethernet traffic and will support a wide variety of links between 2.5 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s capacities. This solution also prepares the Golden Telecom transport network for significant traffic growth in the future, providing a cost-effective upgrade path to 40 Gb/s capacity when required.

Sorin Lupu, President Eastern Europe, Nortel, looked to the future: "As well as enabling Golden Telecom to offer service more widely across Russia, the fibre-optic backbone will also be able to handle next-generation IMS-based bandwidth-hungry applications such as IPTV, as demand for these services grows."

Golden Telecom’s wholly-owned nationwide fibre-optic backbone network will, it is hoped, significantly increase geographic coverage and is expected to attract new subscribers from the regional population of the Russian Federation, estimated at 63 million users and some 45% of Russia’s entire population.

Golden Telecom also plans to use its fibre-optic backbone to create an effective transition-path to DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology that will deliver network efficiencies such as real-time data back up, maximised server efficiency, and fast access to data recovery services for emergency situations. To date, in the first stage of the project, Golden Telecom deployed the Nortel Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 platform with a view to providing the necessary flexibility and optimal transition path to DWDM technology.

* Golden Telecom is a facilities-based provider of integrated telecommunications and Internet services in major population centres throughout Russia and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. It offers voice, data and Internet services to corporations, operators and consumers, using its overlay network in such cities as Moscow, Kiev, St Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Kaliningrad, Krasnoyarsk, Alma-Ata, and Tashkent, and (via intercity fibre-optic and satellite-based networks) nearly 290 combined access points. The company also offers cellular communication services in Kiev and Odessa.

more info: www.nortel.com    www.goldentelecom.com