Kamchatka-Sakhalin-Magadan fiber optic line to be launched in Q2 2017
VLADIVOSTOK. May 16 (Interfax) - Rostelecom , Russia's national telecom provider, has announced the completion of pre-commissioning and installation work on the Sakhalin-Magadan section of the Kamchatka-Sakhalin-Magadan underwater fiber optic line.
Construction of the line is scheduled for completion at the end of this year, and it is expected to be put into operation in the second quarter of 2017, the public relations director of Rostelecom's Far East branch, Lyubov Alekseyeva told Interfax.
The branch said in a press release that the deepwater cable along the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk links the village of Ola in Magadan Region and the town of Okha in Sakhalin Region.
Rostelecom's partner for delivery of equipment and laying the underwater section of the line is China's Huawei, for which this is the first project to lay an underwater cable system in Russia.
The cable-laying vessel Cable Innovator has laid about 900 km of fiber optic cable along the bottom of the Sea of Okhotsk.
"We have solved the critical problem of connecting Magadan Region to transcontinental fiber optic communication channels. The underwater mainline, intended to create a unified information space, is of strategic importance for the region," the director of Rostelecom's Far East branch, Alexei Sapunov was quoted as saying in the press release.
Rostelecom said it achieved the technical readiness of the underwater line on the Sakhalin-Magadan section at the end of 2015.
"Since the day of the line's technical readiness, Rostelecom has conducted three tests of the system. Everything went well," the director of Rostelecom's Magadan branch, Sergei Vlasov said.
Rostelecom is now continuing work on modernizing telecommunications infrastructure in Magadan and other population centers in the region, replacing obsolete copper cables with fiber optics.
New intrazone networks are being built on MetroEthernet (fiber to the home) technology.