The construction of a fiber optic communication line (FOCL) over the St. Petersburg-Primorsk-Vyborg portion was completed in Leningrad Oblast in December. This is one of the most important investment projects of North-West Telecom in Leningrad Oblast.

The fiber optic communication line of the total length of 240 km was under construction from July 2005, including the design work. Due to the teamwork of personnel of the Leningrad Oblast division of NWT and Telefonstroy SMU-5 LLC, the construction was finished within a tight schedule, despite the challenging earthwork in Vyborg District where rock had to be drilled using heavy equipment and special drilling tools.

The route of the St. Petersburg-Primorsk-Vyborg communication line was developed with regard to location of large enterprises of Leningrad Oblast that need high-quality info/communication services, such as Port Vysotsky LLC, Vyborgskaya Tselluloza OJSC, and specialized oil loading sea port of Primorsk.

The completion of the St. Petersburg-Primorsk-Vyborg FOCL construction is an important event both for North-West Telecom and for Leningrad Oblast. The fiber optic line will improve the quality of local, intrazonal,  and national connections, and enable a high-speed access to the Internet. Due to the construction of FOCL, the users in Leningrad Oblast will get access to such rapidly developing forward-looking services as IP television, on-call video etc. already in the nearest future.

The St. Petersburg-Vyborg FOCL is a part of the fiber optic infrastructure to build a unified interregional multiservice network (MSN) of North-West Telecom connecting the MSN central node in St. Petersburg to MSN regional nodes in all regions of the North-West. Construction of such a network will enable bringing up-to-date high-speed communication services directly from St. Petersburg to the remotest corners of Russia’s North-Western Federal District.