NTT Com and TransTelecom to establish the shortest optical route from Russia to Asia

NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), a global ICT solution provider, and TransTeleCom (TTC), Russia’s backbone telecom operator, will jointly establish a 500 km high-capacity undersea fiber-optic cable "the Hokkaido-Sakhalin Cable System (HSCS)" that will transmit data at up to 640 Gigabits per second between Ishikari, Hokkaido in Japan and Nevelsk, Sakhalin in Russia, based on Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. The project will be completed by the end of 2007. Two companies will jointly invest $50 mln, according to RBC Daily. Boris Ovtchinnikov from J'son& Partners admits that the market of international transit is not open but NTT's part in the project may provide special conditions for traffic transit. The lack of that kind of partnership may be a problem for another Russian operator Summa Telecom which started to work on an undersea cable between mainland Russia, Sakhalin and Japan this year, too.