Prysmian reaches Russian fibre milestone

Prysmian Cables & Systems has reached a significant milestone in Russia with the latest project for its VertiCasa™ FTTH cable system taking deliveries in the country past the 1000 cable km mark.

Russia is currently playing a leading role in the adoption of Fibre to the Home/Building (FTTH/B) and according to data from the FTTH Council Europe more Russian subscribers were connected to fibre than in any other European country during the second half of 2009. In fact, according to the Council, Russia is the leading European country among the G20 economies in terms of subscriber fibre penetration. The Prysmian VertiCasa™ system, designed specifically to deliver an optical fibre connection to residents in high rise multi dwelling units, was first installed in Russia in the eastern city of Vladivostok in 2008 and has since been widely deployed in several of its major cities with the landmark project just completed in Novosibirsk, the largest city in the Siberian region.

With a large proportion of Russian inhabitants living in MDU housing in the cities the VertiCasa system is the ideal technology for providing a fast and cost effective fibre connection. Ongoing projects are planned in order to keep up with the Russian consumer's growing appetite for high speed broadband and Prysmian is busy in training local installation teams who be deploying the systems across the vast territory. Director of Global Telecom activities for Prysmian Mr Hakan Ozmen commented "Prysmian has been an active player in the Russian marketplace for many years and we recently established our first production facility in the country in the city of Ribinsk where we manufacture cables for the energy side of our business. Regarding telecoms there is no doubt that Russia is a rapidly growing market. The social and economic benefits of high bandwidth services have been recognized in the country and we now need to help create the infrastructure that will allow these services to be made available."