Alcatel-Lucent, Rostelecom launch EPEG project across Russia

Alcatel-Lucent and Rostelecom have announced the operational launch of the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) project across Russia.

EPEG is a high-capacity fiber-optic cable system connecting Europe with the Middle East and the Persian Gulf countries, with possibility of further extension to the Indian subcontinent.

Following extensive project testing, the Russian section of the network will be put into commercial operation, enabling Rostelecom to offer ultra-broadband transit across Russia, and helping it meet growing global demand for broadband and other data services.

The project was launched to provide an alternative high capacity terrestrial data route to the undersea data links across the Red Sea, Suez Canal, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea regions.

Rostelelecom and Alcatel-Lucent have completed and put into operation the Russian section of the EPEG project, supporting the superfast distribution of international voice and Internet data across the country.

"Spanning more than 3,500 kilometers of Russia from the Ukraine border to Azerbaijan and Georgia, the network boosts capacity up to eight terabits per second (Tbps) over a single optical pair, each the width of a human hair," the company said in its statement.

"It is expected that in the international market the amount of transit traffic from the Middle East and India to Europe will grow dramatically in the near future and the new EPEG high-speed optical data backbone network will help meet that demand today and for years to come by relying upon the shortest route," said Eugeniy Sekerin, executive director of Telecom Operators department of Rostelecom.

"We are very pleased to have been able to work with Rostelecom in the EPEG project and to complete this very important link in the territory of Russia. Our 100G technology helps operators build high-capacity backbone networks and dramatically increase the speed of data transfer while reducing the cost per bit," said Alexander Tikhonov, country senior officer, Alcatel-Lucent in CIS.