The deployment, in partnership with Ciena, will utilise 100Gbps technology and connect the cities of Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Belogorsk, Birobidzhan, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. This will bring the route close to the borders of Mongolia, China and North Korea.
The Far Eastern ring is expected to provide new opportunities for IP transit with cross-border connectivity and interconnects with carriers, as well as serving as the wireline backhaul for VimpelCom’s countrywide LTE network roll-out.
“Certainly with China, there is a lot of transit traffic, not only trans-border traffic but there is trans-Russian traffic that comes out of China as alternative routes to the submarine links,” said Peter Newcombe, VP of sales EMEA at Ciena.
The Vladivostok section of the ring will run near to the Russian landing station of the Rostelecom and KDDI owned Russia-Japan Cable Network (RJCN), suggesting that VimpelCom may be attempting to establish additional connectivity to Japan.
As part of the contract, Ciena is also upgrading VimpelCom’s European ring with 40Gbps and 100Gbps technology to increase capacity and robustness. The ring covers the cities of Moscow, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Cheboksary, Kazan, Ufa, Samara, Saratov, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Tula and back to Moscow.
The carrier’s Urals to Siberia route, connecting Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk, will also be upgraded to 40Gbps.
It is understood that Ciena beat Huawei for the contract, which covers some 10,700km of cable, but VimpelCom later selected the Chinese vendor to manage its integrated telecommunications network in a five-year deal.
The bulk of the Ciena contract is expected to be completed by the end of 2012, with some capacity additions stretching into 2013, according to Newcombe.
