Alcatel-Lucent and Rostelecom,Russia’s leading national service provider, have announced the operational launch of the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) project across Russia.
 
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.
 
Spanning more than 3,500 kilometers of Russia from the Ukraine border to Azerbaijan and Georgia, the network boosts capacity up to 8 terabits per second (Tbps) over a single optical pair, each the width of a human hair.

Eugeniy Sekerin, Executive Director of Telecom Operators department of Rostelecom said: “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.”
 
Alexander Tikhonov, Country Senior Officer, Alcatel-Lucent in CIS said: “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.”