BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

03/01/2008

Beltelecom reviews progress in 2007

In a recent press conference the general director of Belarusian fixed line operator Beltelecom, Konstantin Tikar, reviewed his company's achievements in 2007. Local online news journal e-belarus.org reports that according to Mr. Tikar, digital telephone lines made up 70% of the telco's total fixed telephone network by the end of the year, while overall fixed line teledensity stood at 36.5 lines per 100 inhabitants. Rural teledensity was lower, not surprisingly, at 27.7%. In 2007 Beltelcom deployed 1,500km of fibre-optic cables, commissioned a second international node in the frontier with Russia, extended its Belarus-Latvia node, and began work on the construction of a second fibre-optic link with Lithuania.

In addition, the PTO began work on installing new wireless in the local loop (WiLL) terminals in September 2007, and by December had 3,500 in operation. The telco also counted around 40,000 broadband subscribers by the end of the year - bolstered by the October expansion of its internet gateway bandwidth to 2.5Gbps, up from 1.8Gbps in 2006. Since July 2007, the company has also been testing 50 Wi-Fi hotspots across the country, as well as testing wireless broadband systems in the 5.6GHz frequency band based on pre-WiMax technology. At the start of 2007 Beltelecom also announced the launch of its Metro Ethernet project and triple-play service pack.

Source:

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21109&email=html