vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #548 / Business / Reading article...

Japan’s second largest telecommunication operator KDDI Corporation signed on Tuesday a contract worth $42.7 million with Russia’s Rostelecom to lay an underwater high-speed fiber optic line between the cities of Joetsu and Nakhodka in southern Primorye aiming to improve telecommunication services.

Two cable line routes each spanning 900 kilometers are designed to run across the bottom of the Sea of Japan. The lines capable of transmitting data 640 gigabytes per second are projected to increase current capabilities by 1024 times. The line will become part of the Transmit Europe-Asia (TEA) initiative to link Europe with Asia via Russia.

Construction of the line will presumably start in summer 2007 and will be performed by the NEC Corporation through the application of the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. The line is expected to go into operation in March 2008, a press statement from the company said.

“The project will answer rising demands for high-speed communication between Russia and Japan as well as between Japan and Europe,” KDDI Corporation Tadashi Onodera was quoted by a press statement from Rostelecom as saying.

The current fiber optic communication line introduced in 1995 to provide service between Russia, Japan and Korea has a capability limited to 560 megabytes per second.