Russia launches high speed, low latency link between Europe and Asia

Russian carrier MegaFon has announced the commercial launch of an 8,700 kilometre long terrestrial fibre optic trunk connecting Europe and Asia. The DREAM (Diverse Route for European and Asian Markets) link extends from Frankfurt-am-Main to the Kazakhstan-China border, through the territories of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and was created by MegaFon in cooperation with Kazakhtelecom and Interoute.

The companies claim that the terrestrial cable delivers higher reliability compared to submarine installations which can often be affected by external factors. A case in point being the geographical location of DREAM being planned out on a route with low seismic activity.

“The unique geographical position of Russia allows us to offer the market an attractive route for transmission of information. By cooperating with MegaFon, international telecom operators will be able to utilize the safest and most optimal route to organise the transfer of data for their clients, as well as increase the reliability of their networks. Every year the volume of traffic sent from Europe to Asia, along with the demand for the capacity of communication channels, is steadily growing,” said MegaFon’s General Director, Ivan Tavrin.

According to MegaFon the DREAM route offers a much reduced round trip delay time between Hong Kong and Frankfurt-am-Main when compared with existing trunk lines on the market, making it ideal for financial institutions, online traders and internet companies looking to gain a time advantage.

In the first phase of the project, MegaFon is ready to provide customers with reliable DWDM communication channels at speeds of up to 10Gbps although the fully constructed system has a potential capacity of up to 8Tbps.

“Provision of reliable capacity to Asia is currently very important for Europe,” said Renzo Ravaglia, Executive Vice-President, Service provider business, at Interoute, a pan-European backbone network operator that now pitches itself as a cloud services firm. “Terrestrial routes like DREAM are the ideal solution for development of high-speed circuits between these two parts of the world. The new path, from our point of view, will be an alternative solution to the existing transcontinental systems and meet high demand from the market,” said Ravaglia.