Russia House connection for Verizon

By Peter Dinham
Friday, 10 July 2009 08:21

Strategy

The recent US-Russia summit in Moscow was all about high level diplomacy and an agreement on reducing nuclear arsenals, but behind the politics there was a commercial agreement falling into place with local Russian telecommunications company, Synterra and American telco Verizon signing up to a deal of their own.

Synterra, who provide national telecommunications services across the vast Russian Federation, inked a master services agreement with Verizon that will allow Synterra customers in Russia to expand their geographic presence by accessing Verizon’s advanced global communications network which spans six continents.

In return, Verizon will be able to leverage the Synterra network and send customer traffic to major cities throughout Russia.

Both companies say the joint agreement, signed in Moscow a few days ago during the week of the US-Russian presidential summit, will provide significant benefits to their customers.

Under the agreement, independent telecommunications system operators in Russia will send their traffic to the Synterra data centre in Moscow, where the traffic will be transferred to the Verizon Business global network.  Verizon’s network will provide Synterra customers with access to more than 150 countries, 2,700 cities and 200 data centres located around the world, as well as to Verizon’s voice, data, video and IP services.

Verizon will use Synterra’s Moscow data centre to deliver customer traffic directly to the Synterra network.

General director of Synterra, Vitaly Slisen, said the “signing of this agreement between one of the biggest communications companies in the world, Verizon Business, and the Russian national communications service provider Synterra is an important step on the way to innovative cooperation between our countries and the realisation of arrangements of the world summit concerning the development of the information society.”
 
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