The Elektrosviaz of the Republic of Karelia branch of OJSC North-West Telecom has started up a radio relay line and a digital exchange in Pudozh, the hardest-to-access district center of the Republic of Karelia.

The distance from Petrozavodsk to that district center is over 400 kilometers by a motor road. A feasibility study showed that radio relay communication across Lake Onega would have been a cheaper and more reliable solution, requiring a 65-kilometer span at the narrowest place, the total length of the radio relay line being 150 km. For all the self-evident nature of the solution, i.e. avoiding rugged terrain, marshes, and forests, such lines are quite seldom built even in the worldwide practice due to the water level’s impact on the radio signal. 

To enable quality communication and a full set of broadband access services for subscribers of Pudozh, it was decided to open an up-to-date digital exchange. 

The work started in January 2004, and in December of the same year, the project that cost on the whole about RUR 50 million was completed, with the facility commissioned for service.    

The exchange’s capacity is 3016 numbers, of which 2000 will be used to replace the obsolete capacity, and 1016 numbers, for development.

Today this district center, the sixth in the Republic to get 100% digitization, has an RSU exchange by Siemens that has fitted in the integrated program of implementation of a multilevel system of user access nodes controllable from the Central Exchange of Petrozavodsk. The subsidiary is the first, and so far the only operator in the North-West to be implementing such system.

Currently, the digitization level in the Republic has reached 51%, and in its capital Petrozavodsk it has exceeded 73%. Fully digitized are Prionezhsky District, and district centers Belomorsk, Loukhi, Pryazha, Lahdenpohja, and Pudozh.