MegaFon, Lattelecom, and DT Open New Route to Russia

There’s a new network route connecting western Russia with Germany and its main Frankfurt hub. Russia’s MegaFon has teamed up with Latvia’s Lattelecom and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom to create the “Baltic highway”.

The new route will give carriers the option of a lower latency data corridor to complement the usual routes through Scandanavia and the Ukraine. Passing through the Baltics and Poland seems like the obvious way to do it, but politics have probably played a role in keeping activity there minimal over the years.

Connectivity to, within, and across Russia and the other former Soviet entities has been a growing internet story over the last few years, promising to help reduce Asia’s dependence on submarine cables to connect to itself.

MegaFon will use the new transit route to improve its IP backbone and give Russian customers faster response times for their web surfing. Latvia gains substantial diversity for its small but highly connected population. And Deutsche Telekom gets more direct pipes to balance those of Teliasonera to the north as both continue to look east for growth.

Now if only I could find a map of this Baltic Highway someplace…

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Categories: Internet Backbones