Paris, France – Alcatel and Delta Telecom, a leading cellular operator in Russia who operates under the Sky Link brand and provides CDMA-450 services in the city of St.Petersburg, Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod regions, as well as in the Republic of Karelia, today announced the signature of a contract, to modernize the operator’s backbone network in the city of St. Petersburg and the region.

"We have partnered with Alcatel since 2001," said Constantine Kolomensky, Director of Network Development for Sky Link St.Petersburg. "To keep leading position in the telecommunication market of the North-West region of Russia, we must continuously evolve our network. Benefiting from Alcatel’s expertise in optical networking, we will be well positioned to give our customers access to the most advanced highly reliable services, while reducing our total cost of network ownership."

"Sky Link turned to Alcatel because of its ability to help transform their network in a timely manner and address subscriber demand for new, attractive services," stated Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel’s optical networking solutions. "Setting the stage for a future migration to IP radio access networks, Alcatel’s optical networking solutions support the operator’s requirements for increased capacity driven by bandwidth-consuming mobile services".

Sky Link represents a new breed of mobile operators that are turning to Alcatel to upgrade their infrastructure for the mobile data revolution. The Alcatel solution will be based on its data-aware Optical Multi-Service Node (OMSN) systems offering Delta Telecom a single platform optimized to aggregate multiple traffic types and backhaul the mobile traffic from base stations to the core. Furthermore, mobile switches will be interconnected though the Alcatel 1692 Metrospan Edge coarse wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) system providing Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to cope with service growth. Alcatel will also upgrade the existing Alcatel 1350 management suite – which enables to manage packet, TDM and wavelength connectivity services.

Providing advanced multiplexing, aggregation and optical protection management, the Alcatel solution will enable Sky Link St. Petersburg to efficiently meet the growing needs for mobile voice and high-speed data services in the city of St. Petersburg and its area. The project is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2006.