News

MOSCOW, Aug 5 - PRIME. Cable laying vessels begin deep-sea laying of the transarctic fiber-optic communication line Murmansk - Vladivostok, which will become a unique project that has no analogues in the world, the "digital ridge of the Arctic," Alexey Strelchenko, general director of Perspective Technologies Agency JSC (chief executive officer of the project), told reporters.

"The deployment of a communication line from Teriberka (a village in the Murmansk region - ed.) Begins with a call to all ports of the Arctic coast to Vladivostok. Six years for such a project is an incredibly shock pace, no one in the world in the Arctic did anything like that, "Strelchenko said.

According to him, the project is financed entirely at the expense of the state budget, its cost is about 65 billion rubles. A factory for the production of fiber optic cable has already begun. 

"The project is very ambitious, obviously we will face new difficulties and challenges. We looked at the experience abroad, there is a project in Alaska, there is a latitude of cable to the south and a length of less. But there is no analogue to our project, we will not ask anyone, we will work out ourselves, "said Andrey Kuropyatnikov, general director of FSUE Morsviazsputnik. He added that international companies from Asia and Europe, including Scandinavia, are already interested in the implementation of the project.

The shortest fiber line between Europe and Asia will be an alternative to satellite communication in the northern latitudes, will provide reliable and accessible communication and fast Internet in the Russian Arctic. The Polar Express is designed to provide a digital component of the development of the Northern Sea Route, its port infrastructure, as well as oil and gas and environmental projects in the Arctic. The project is being implemented by order of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation with the support of Rosmorrechflot, Rosmorport and FSUE Morsviazsputnik. A whole fleet of cable, auxiliary and research vessels will be used to lay the line. The implementation period of the Polar Express project is 2026, it is planned to lay 12,650 kilometers of cable from six pairs of optical fibers with a capacity of up to 104 Tb/s.