OREANDA-NEWS. On 05 August 2008 was announced, that Rostelecom, Russia’s national telecommunications operator, entered into a direct intranetwork collaboration agreement with Vavilon-T (Republic of Tajikistan), which is one of the founding members of cellular operator Vavilon-Mobile. The agreement provides for a bilateral exchange of voice traffic between Tajik and Russian operators.

Collaboration with Vavilon-T will allow Rostelecom to raise its transmission capacity on direct routes by way of a traffic exchange between Russia and Tajikistan, and also to raise the quality of ILD services offered by the Russian operator to end users. The opportunity of working with the Tajik operator will make it possible to raise the reliability of data relayed, increase transmission volumes and lower the cost of transmitting ILD traffic.

To date, Rostelecom has gained great expertise in collaborating with a number of Tajik operators which are active players on both the national and global market. As a result, an important facet of Rostelecom’s partnership with Vavilon-T is the diversification of traffic termination paths for Tajikistan, given that the arrival of another direct route to Tajikistan makes it possible to move additional volumes of traffic in this direction.

“Our collaboration with the Republic of Tajikistan is an important step in developing international relations. Entering into a direct interconnect agreement with Vavilon-T is in line with the company’s goal of increasing interconnect with FSU operators in order to raise the quality of calls made by Russian users”, says Rostelecom CEO Konstantin Solodukhin. Vavilon-T and Vavilon-Mobile are two of the main players on the telecommunications market in the Republic of Tajikistan. To date, Vavilon-Mobile has a subscriber base which numbers over 800,000, and the operator commands 35% of the cellular market. Moving forward, Rostelecom intends to expand the range of services provided by Vavilon-T.

Rostelecom is in the process of aggressively rolling out international collaboration at various levels. At present, the company participates in 25 international cable systems and does business with some 400 operators and companies. Rostelecom is a permanent member of International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has membership in the Regional Telecommunications Commonwealth (RTC) and also takes part in other international organizations, including the Pacific Ocean Telecommunications Council (PTC) and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).