Rostelecom this week announced that it has rolled out fibre infrastructure for Russian gas company SVGC, and separately installed WiFi access points in the town of Vologda.
The Russian telco said it has replaced SVGC’s obsolete copper network with fibre-optic lines. It has rolled out 12.5km of fibre for the company’s 11 branches, with the possibility of further expansion in future.
As a result of the initiative, the company has network speeds of up to 100Mbps, and also has access to cloud-based IT and business services that will enable it to improve interaction between employees even in remote areas and boost communications with customers.
SVGC is located in Samara, an area in which Rostelecom has been working to migrate customers from copper to fibre since 2015. To date it has replaced more than 100km of copper in nine cities and 11 villages in the region, it said.
In a separate announcement, Rostelecom revealed it has created a WiFi zone in the historical centre of Vologda.
The telco has installed three WiFi access points in Vologda’s Kremlin Square, each with the capability of connecting up to 400 devices. It has also laid a fibre-optic line to connect the square.
During a week-long test period Rostelecom monitored traffic on the WiFi hotspots and recorded over 100 unique users per day.
“This indicates that the service will be in demand,” said Andrei Bochkovsky, technical director of Rostelecom’s Vologda branch.