This month, RASCOM has celebrated its twentieth anniversary. From a local backbone carrier that established the first commercial SDH network in Russia between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, RASCOM became a major player on the telecom market in North-West Russia, Scandinavia and Europe. DE•CIX spoke with Vitaly Kireev, General Director of RASCOM, about their network and the company’s strategy.
DE•CIX: RASCOM joined DE•CIX in 2009. When you look back at those 20 years of your history, how did it influence the strategy of your company?
Vitaly Kireevi: During all these 20 years, the development of the company RASCOM has been targeted at one objective – creating a comfortable service and technology environment for providing backbone telecomm services while remaining in demand as a “carriers’ carrier”. Since 2003, our company has been systematically developing the international segment of our network while building new sections on European territory and arranging connections to the biggest world-level Internet providers and the main international traffic exchange points. DE•CIX is one of the biggest traffic exchange points in Europe, so, within the frames of the company development program, in August 2009, RASCOM arranged an interface of its network with DE•CIX in Frankfurt. This connection has allowed our company to offer, for our customers, access to the DE•CIX’s services. Besides, this agreement opened, for us, new opportunities of co-operating with new telecom carriers, Internet providers and other telecom services vendors.
You have been a DE•CIX reseller since 2012. What were the reasons to join DE•CIX as their reseller?
After several years of working together, we evaluated the reliability and the growing demand of DE•CIX’s services among our customers. We took the decision to extend partnership relationships with DE•CIX, based on which we have arranged the additional service for the carriers to be connected. The service saves, for our customers, the costs of building telecom nodes of their own in Frankfurt. It allows, while making a contract with one provider, to get, at the same time, both backbone traffic transit over the routes established by RASCOM, and the connection to DE•CIX’s services. The users of that service get, within the shortest time span, a reliable complex service featuring high-level monitoring from a unique Network Management Center of the company RASCOM and new opportunities for exchanging traffic with the international Internet community.
What does your company look like today?
By 2013, our company has built an international network having a geographically diversified ring-like structure: State-border with Finland – Helsinki – Stockholm – Copenhagen – Amsterdam – Frankfurt – Copenhagen – Stockholm – Helsinki - State-border with Finland RASCOM’s network consists of 2 independent DWDM systems that were established between the cities above mentioned usage being made of fibers in different cables. Maximum capacity of every DWDM system is up to 8800Gbps. The total length of RASCOM’s network equals 8.6 thousand kilometers. Being a partner of the European traffic exchange points in Helsinki, Stockholm, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, RASCOM is arranging connection to those in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.
What are RASCOM’s plans for developing your network within Russia and abroad?
On the territory of Russia, in order to separate regional traffic at the section from Saint-Petersburg to Moscow, we are planning to activate a 3rd DWDM system. As far as the international segment is concerned, RASCOM is continuing to build and, in 2013, we are planning to launch into operation the first section Frankfurt – Uzhgorod (Ukraine) on the transit route Frankfurt – Kiev – Moscow.
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