North-West Telecom Starts PON-Based Triple Play in Kaliningrad

Friday, November 13th, 2009

In November 2009, North-West Telecom started commercial operation of Triple Play services based on passive optical networks (PON) in Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad Branch became the Company’s second regional division after St. Petersburg Branch, which enables its subscribers to connect advanced telecommunication services via fiber optic lines extended to their apartments.

Currently, PON-based services are available to 10,000 users in Kaliningrad, with about 1,500 more to be provided with the full range of Triple Play services by the end of 2009.

The package of Triple Play services based on the PON technology that is offered in Kaliningrad comprises:

  • digital quality telephone communication services: local and intra-zone telephone communication, access to information / inquiry services, and long distance communication. The plans for the near future include provision of video communication services;
  • high-speed access to the Internet at rates of up to 100 Mbit/s (“Mega Avangard” line of tariff plans) with the free extra services “Local Network”, “Web Games”, “My Photos”, “My Files”, and “My Journal”;
  • Avangard TV digital interactive television where you may watch over 60 satellite and on-air channels of various content (news, sports, films, music, and much more) of digital quality and with such services as “Video On Call”, “Postponed View”, “TV Guide”; subsequently, high definition television (HDTV) will be provided.

Consistently developing the “packetized services” sector, N.W.Telecom offers its PON customers in Kaliningrad “Avangard Duo+” packages (telephony and Mega Avangard) and “Avangard Trio+” packages (telephony, Mega Avangard and Avangard TV). They may be used with the maximum economy of 360 rubles a month (subject to connection of the “Avangard Trio+” package at the Internet access rate of 8 Mbit/s, selection of the “Grand Premiere” package of TV channels, and signing of an agreement for 12 months.)

In the night time (from 01:00 till 08:00 Kaliningrad time), the “Night Acceleration” service is available to all Mega Avangard subscribers, due to which, the bit rates for these tariff plans are doubled. For instance, for a subscriber of the Mega 4 tariff plan with the daytime access rate of 8 Mbit/s, the bit rate increases to 16 Mbit/s in the night time.

According to Oleg V. Popov, Commercial Manager of N.W.Telecom, “PON is the most promising technology, which has now reached the regions too. Among the undoubted advantages of PON are integrated services provided by one operator, high capacity and reliability of fiber optic channels, guaranteed digital quality, and interactive management of the services. We are sure that in the course of time, most of our subscribers will choose PON as a technology enabling creation of an up-to-date “digital” home with the full set of top-quality services.”

North-West Telecom is one of Russia’s first companies to have started provision of the full range of advanced Triple Play telecommunication services based on the PON technology, laying high-speed optic communication lines to its customers’ homes.

In St. Petersburg, the development of the technology started as early as in the last year 2008: the pilot project of N.W.Telecom providing Triple Play services via an optic fiber infrastructure was launched in April. By the end of the last year, the Company started commercial operation of the Triple Play services, and the 10,000th PON subscriber was connected as soon as in September 2009. Currently, PON covers over 150,000 homes in St. Petersburg. The number of N.W.Telecom connected using this technology is nearing 14,000.