The four companies, including Italy's STET, Turkish firm PTT and Ukrainian Ukrtek, will equally share financing of the Odessa-Novorossiisk-Istanbul-Palermo fiber-optic link, which is scheduled to be finished in 1995, said Rostelekom President Oleg Belov. He said that 25 other countries have already signed on to use the line for international service.
The projected 3,400-kilometer line will have a capacity of 15,360 channels, and will be connected to Russia through a 4,000-line exchange in Rostov-on-Don, Belov said.
Next week, he said, Rostelekom will sign a contract with multinational firm Alcatel to provide submarine cable for the project under a $78 million credit from STET. Rostelekom will also use the STET credit to pay for usage of a switching station in Palermo that will give Russian callers further international access.
Rostelekom's contribution to the project will be in the form of labor and machinery for installing cables, said vice president Viktor Baklanov.
"Our goal was, is and will be to do everything with the hands of Russian people," he said.
The project also includes a 1,650-kilometer Moscow-Novorossiisk land line, Belov said. He said that Rostelekom had signed an $18 million contract this week for fiber-optic cable and equipment to be supplied and financed by German firm Siemens.
Rostelekom also announced it had completed Russia's 930-kilometer overland portion of a 1,800-kilometer fiber-optic line intended to connect Russia, Japan and Korea next January. The Japanese firms KDD Submarine Cable System, NEC Corp., and Fujitsu Ltd., as well as Siemens and the British firm CTS, are providing equipment and installation for the project, which is being financed with a credit from the Export-Import Bank of Japan.
Last week, the Export-Import Bank approved a $200 million credit to pay for equipment and expertise from Siemens and Japanese firm NEC to complete a Moscow-Khabarovsk link that would connect to the Russia-Japan-Korea line. "This is the backbone of digital long-distance communications in Russia," Belov said, adding that the 7,630-kilometer digital line, designed to serve 24 Russian regions, will be the longest in the world.
Rostelekom, a joint-stock company, was privatized last September. Twenty-two percent was sold to the general public at voucher auctions.
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