Economics

17:52, 23.04.2008 | Sakhalin Region

NTT Communicationsand TransTeleCom of Russia said they will start using a 570-kilometer optical fiber cable connecting Hokkaido and Sakhalin in June to respond to rising demand for fast data transmissions between Japan and Europe as well as Japan and Russia, a Kyodo News report said.

The newly installed fiber-optic cable, connecting Ishikari in Hokkaido and Nevelsk in Russia's Far East, will be able to transmit data at up to 640 gigabits per second, according to the two companies, the report said.

The construction cost was equally shared between TransTeleCom, a wholly owned unit of Russian Railways, and NTT Communications, the two companies said.

Sergey Lipatov, president of TTC, told a news conference in Tokyo that since the new cable will be connected to the company's backbone 55,000-km network stretching from Sakhalin to the west end of Russia, it will become a major network for data transmission and the internet between Japan and Europe, the Kyodo News report said.

Although existing networks also connect Japan and Europe, either through the Indian Ocean or the Pacific Ocean and the US, the Russian route is more stable and reliable because most of the cable is under Russian soil instead of below the ocean as is the case with other cable networks, Lipatov said.

The two telecom operators installed the high-capacity fiber-optic cable last December and they are now in the final phase of testing the cable, called the Hokkaido-Sakhalin Cable System.

- America's Network