MTU-Inform reports completion of modernization activities for the Northwest district peripheral ring of its SDH fiber-optic carrier network. The company network throughput in this district has reached 2.5 Gbps. As reported before, the carrier network modernization costs amounted to 1.8 million of US dollars.

Thus, the next section of the high-bandwidth multi-service network, which construction was announced at Communications-Expocomm'2001 to have started a year ago, has been put to operation. This carrier network modernization was caused by extensive development of high-end residential housing and business-class housing in this area. The increased throughput of the network was necessitated by the increased load of backbones.

During modernization, the peripheral ring equipment ASF-4 (STM-4) boards were replaced by ASF-16 (STM-16) boards produced by ECI Telecom. Principal improvements included modification of the SDH network central ring. The increase of the network throughput is due to combination of different topologies. The resources released after installation of new equipment will be used at peripheral rings of the MTU-Inform carrier network.

Modernization made it possible to introduce a digital TV signal transmission technology using SDH channels. Implementation of this technology, which is unique in Russia, will make possible to transmit digital TV signals to any location inside Moscow and to increase the range of programs broadcast via cable networks.

"The success in the last year has shown that multi-service wideband networks are on demand. We proposed to transmit TV signals to Moscow buildings as late as in 2000 after the fire on the Ostankino TV tower," says Said Alimbekov, MTU-Inform general director. "In the nearest future, we shall be able to manage digital TV-signal transmission to almost any point in Moscow. Our plans include multi-service wideband operation at all high-end and business class residential projects serviced by the Company".