Belarusian telco Mobile Digital Communications (MDC), which trades as velcom, has unveiled additional information about its ongoing high speed GPON fixed internet rollout that it claims will ultimately deliver broadband access at speeds of up to 10Gbps. The service, which will be marketed under the Atlant Telecom banner of its sister firm, is being rolled out in parts of the capital Minsk and its suburbs, initially focusing on the densely populated neighbourhood known as the Swan Quarter and the business centre, Minsk World. Atlant Telecom recently hooked up about 3,000 apartments in blocks in Zakharov, Pulihova, Pervomayskaya and Antonovsky. Going forward, velcom has also recently received permission to deploy GPON infrastructure in Borovlyany. velcom continues to work on the upgrade of its Ethernet-based network but will look to transfer subscribers to GPON in future.
In April this year, velcom announced the launch of a large-scale rollout of high speed GPON broadband networks in Belarus. Having initially constructed a pilot project in Bobruisk, deploying GPON technology to more than 23,000 apartments, velcom said it was keen to extend the rollout countrywide, with commercial services expected to come onstream in the capital in the second half of this year, it says. Current end-user data speeds are capped to 100Mbps, although technical director Christian Lax says that the move to GPON will allow for future scalability and the eventual availability of 10Gbps services.