It's been a little over a century since France's Napoleon Bonaparte marched on Moscow, and disaster ensued. One hundred and one years later, let's hope France's latest Russian adventure works out better.
On Thursday, French telecom equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) announced that it is partnering with Russian telco Avelacom to build a 100 gigabit-per-second (100G) optical backbone network from London to Moscow. Based on Alcatel-Lucent's Agile Optical Networking technology, the 100G optical network will permit high-capacity, low-latency, high-speed distribution of data between the two capitols. The network will also tie up with Avelacom's existing lines among Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.
Alcatel says technology will permit the transmission of data at 100G speeds across each of 88 optical wavelengths along each strand of fiber on the conduit, "significantly boosting network capacity and performance, as well as providing a clear evolutionary path to 400G connectivity and beyond."
The company's President for the EMEA region, Luis Martinez Amago, noted that this line will be Alcatel's "first deployment of a low latency 100G [Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing] network in the Nordic and Baltic regions."
