The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media will allocate 6.9 billion rubles to Rostelecom to lay the underwater trunk cable to the Chukchi District. This is the last region in Russia where a satellite is used as a trunk canal. Transtelecom also applied for these subsidies. But it was not taken into operation for formal reasons.
As for the mainline, Rostelecom has already announced the beginning of the purchase of works on laying the underwater fiber-optic communication line (FOCL) along the route Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky-Anadyr. This channel is going to be laid from the Kamchatka Territory to the Chukchi District, which will provide the region with a full-fledged high-speed Internet.
Subsidies in the amount of 6.9 billion rubles are allocated from the federal budget.
For a long time, a number of regions of the Russian Far North and the Far East did not have main fiber-optic communication channels. Instead, satellite communications were used, which provided a relatively reliable but not very fast Internet connection. End users used the Internet via wired channels or worked with mobile Internet. Unfortunately, in this case, the quality of communication was not very good, but the prices remained high.
In these regions, operators did not provide unlimited tariffs for wired Internet, even the term "satellite regions" was introduced. Their subscribers, when traveling to these areas, were not able to use the connected packages of traffic, so they had to pay in megabytes.
Gradually, the situation was improving, and the backbone Internet gradually penetrated the most remote regions. Thus, five years ago Rostelecom laid the main fiber-optic line to the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, plus the underwater line to Sakhalin was laid.
In 2015, Rostelecom laid a fiber-optic line from Sakhalin to the Magadan Region, and in 2016 this channel was extended to the Kamchatka Territory. In 2017, the mainline FOCL reached Norilsk. In the same year, the underwater FOCL was laid to the Kuril Islands, which are part of the Sakhalin Oblast. The only region where there is still no wired main canal is the Chukchi District.
This task was solved by introducing a new program, according to which it was planned to allocate 4.7 billion rubles from the country's budget for laying the fiber-optic communication lines to the region. This summer, the Ministry of Communications announced a tender for the allocation of appropriate subsidies. The term of work was extended up to 2021 inclusive, increasing the volume of financing up to 6.9 million rubles. Thus, Br230 million was to be allocated in 2019, Br500 million in 2020, Br2021 - Br4 billion, 2022 - Br2.2 billion.
The length of the line will be 2.2 thousand kilometers, with a capacity of no less than 100 Gbit/s and the possibility of increasing it to 8 Tbit/s. The sea part of the fiber optic line will include at least four optical fibers, while the land part will include at least 24.
It was mentioned above that apart from Rostelecom, another company, Transtelecom, was planning to take part in the project. But its application was not accepted for formal reasons. One of them is that the company has debts to the federal budget for taxes on fees, as well as the absence of the approved technical specifications for the development of design documentation for the construction of the future fiber-optic line in the company's application.
As a result, the tender was recognized as failed, and Rostelecom, as its only participant, was offered to conclude a contract. The further destiny of subsidies was not informed, the press-service of Rostelecom refused to comment on this question. But as far as we can understand, it was Rostelecom that received the subsidies.
Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov said earlier that Chukotka is planned to be connected by the end of 2022. In addition, there are other projects to provide Chukotka with wired backbone Internet - for example, laying fiber-optic cables along the Magadan-Chukotka power bridge. This channel will connect Peschanka, Bilibino and Pevek.
The third option is to continue the branching from the FOCL along the Northern Sea Route.