COMNEWS draws up the results of the milestone Тransnet’2014 in Moscow

On March 19-20, 2014, the 5th International conference Transport Networks & Carrier Cloud Russia 2014, organized by COMNEWS, brought together leading industry experts in Moscow. During two days participants of the conference discussed current situation and outlook for backbone networks in Russia and CIS.

Rostelecom was partner of the conference, while JSC “POWER GRID OPTICAL NETWORKS ENGINEERING” was partner of expert technical session. TransTeleCom Company was Golden Sponsor of the event, while Bronze Sponsor statuses belonged to Ciena, Infinera, Huawei and Alcatel Lucent, Coriant was Registration Sponsor, PCCW Global – Cocktail Sponsor, and T8, MSK-IX, Level 3 Communications 3 and ADV Consulting were Session Sponsors. The event was attended by more than 350 professionals of the backbone network market.

The conference was endorsed by FTTH Council Europe, Information & Computer Technologies Industry Association (APKIT), International Academy of Communications, Association of Regional Telecom Operators, Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC), ASTRA Association of Strategic Outsourcing, Global CIO, CIO clubs of the Republic of Tatarstan, Perm region, Kirov region, and Telecompass consulting agency. The event was also supported by more than 30 dedicated industry media.

The program was kicked off by round table entitled “Paradigm shift in the backbone market: directly connecting to largest content owners and IX instead of Tier-1 networks”. Panelists were interested in the new role of traffic exchanges, expectations from Tier-1 players among Russian companies, importance of network connectivity in today’s world, role of content for network growth. The discussion featured Olga Makarova (MTS Group), Maxim Akinin (Level 3 Communications), Pavel Zavyalov (Mail.Ru Group), Alexey Sokolov (Yandex), Sergey Yakovlev (TransTeleCom Company (TTK), Evgeny Morozov (MSK-IX), Alexey Rogdev (Rostelecom). General Director of China Telecom in Russia Liang Liang joined his colleagues from the Russian telecom in the discussion.

The next session was dedicated to the development of backbone transport networks. Most of the reports in this part of the program were delivered by backbone operators themselves and covered not only well-known projects implemented by MegaFon, Vodafone Russia, Level 3 Communications, PCCW Global, Sigma Telecom, but also some recent initiatives.

Deputy Director of Carrier Business Department of Rostelecom Alexander Yakovenko summarized evolution history of trans-Russian transit route between Europe and Asia. To date, the operator can offer four transit routes for the Euro-Asian traffic: TEA-1, TEA-2, TEA-3 and TEA-4, each of them has its own specifics. Advisor to President of TransTeleCom Company Vitaly Shub told about the prospects of coherent DWDM Ultra Long Haul networks and expounded on the operator’s plans to roll out such network from St.Petersburg to Skovorodino (Amur region). Sales Director in CEE, Russia & CIS of Level 3 Communications Robert Busz explained why transit networks need innovations and new technologies.

This session also provided the chance to learn about the outlook for the industry in Russia’s neighbor countries. Director of Trans-Eurasian Information Super-Highway (ТАSIM) Zaur Hasanov told about the path this project went from a transit route to regional Tier-1 level, which is becoming increasingly crucial to the markets of Azerbaijan and the Trans-Caucasian region.

Several reports were presented by equipment manufacturers, including T8, Coriant, Alcatel Lucent. Managing Director of Ciena representation office in Russia, CIS and the Baltic states Sergey Fishkin dedicated his report to practical convergence of 1TB transit network from vendor’s point of view. Infinera’s Chief systems engineer in Russia and CIS Dmitry Shemyakin spoke about his company’s experience in the same field, followed by Deputy Director – Chief engineer of Huawei Technologies Igor Pavlov, whose report was dedicated to the specifics of building transit networks for international traffic.

At the end of the day representatives of operators, vendors and Internet companies gathered at a round table to discuss Russian operators’ efforts in building backbone networks outside Russia. Key items on the agenda were ways to expand backbone networks outside Russia and improving customer connectivity with the world’s largest telecommunication hubs. Olga Makarova, Director of Internet and Channel Resources Department at Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) shared the company’s plans for network construction. According to Makarova, the operator wants to “expand own infrastructure all the way up to Helsinki”.

The second day of the conference started with a session entitled “Development of transit networks: Joint construction and operation of telecom networks”. Regional Sales Director of Packetlight Ltd. Roman Sheynin presented the expansion concept for 100G networks. Representative of the Latvian state radio and television center Michael Galushka told about new fiber optic routes Russia – Baltic states – Europe. CEO of ComSystems Alexey Denisov covered the optimization of operational costs, while Vice President of Transmode Magnus Grenfeldt, shared his views on the market situation. Speakers from JSC “POWER GRID OPTICAL NETWORKS ENGINEERING” Nikolay Sabinin and Timur Rakhimov explored into construction of fiber optic channels using overhead transmission lines.

The round table “Building and operating corporate networks” focused on the corporate networks going into the commercial market and their collaboration with existing service providers. Issues covered included the pros and cons of building networks based on large resource companies’ infrastructure and their readiness to provide such infrastructure to commercial operators, and possible implications of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media’s initiative for non-discriminatory access to infrastructure in relation to the exclusive status of corporate operators. Experts of the round table included Vitaly Shub (TransTeleCom Company), Konstantin Saveliev (Lenenergo), Alexey Volkov (Svyaztransneft), Andrey Yamschikov (Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System) and Konstantin Marchenko (Т8).

Next round table was entitled “Dark fiber” and focused on various aspects of building fiber optic systems for further sale and lease of fibers to fixed-line cellular service providers. International Sales Director of HAWE Telekom Sp. z o.o. Przemysław Gągała told about dark fiber lines crossing Poland, purchasing fibers and other types of cooperation. The discussion that followed was dedicated to the specifics of long-term contracts in the Russian dark fiber market, choice between purchasing or leasing same length channels, sale and lease of dark fiber in a megapolis.

Technical expert session “Regulation of construction and operation of fiber optic channels using overhead transmission lines” was dedicated to related regulation practices. According to First Deputy General Director - Executive Operations Director of JSC “POWER GRID OPTICAL NETWORKS ENGINEERING” Nikolay Sabinin, the 21st century is meant to take fiber optic network to every single user. “No matter what wireless equipment they make, each wi-fi hotspot needs fiber optic connection”, Sabinin said. “The best possible infrastructure which can be used for that is overhead power transmission lines: where power cable goes, fiber optic can go too”.

The final session of the conference focused on operators’ and service providers’ clouds, and their simplified, virtualized and software-defined future. Following a welcome address from Inoventica Board Member Vitaly Slizen, Anton Salov, Director of Cloud Services and IT delivered a report about Cloud-strategy as a response to OTT in today’s telecom.

The conference concluded with a discussion about the selection of cloud model and the outlook for Carrier Clouds in Russia and worldwide, which featured Head of the Department of Technical Development and Operations of Orange Business Services in Russia and CIS Vladimir Valkovich, Director of International Carrier Business of MTT Sergey Noskov, Interoute’s Regional Director in CEE Ljubica Draskic, CEO of CDNvideo Yaroslav Gorodetsky, CEO of NGENIX Konstantin Chumachenko, Project Manager at DataLine Grigory Atrepiev and Sales Director for Cloud Solutions at Telecom Italia Sparkle/Mednautilus TR Borga Parlar. They discussed the challenges for Carrier Cloud in Russia and barriers for cloud efforts of the operators, along with security issues of public clouds and opportunities in the cloud services market for operators.