Kievstar GSM has approximately 24 million subscribers in Ukraine. The company, covering 29,000 towns and with a nationwide network coverage of 99%, is owned by Telenor and Storm. In 2007 the mobile telecommunications provider achieved sales of 2.1 billion USD. The basis for the major contract placed with S&T was the enormous increase in subscribers – from 2006 to 2008 alone, Kievstar registered an increase of 30%. In addition, the average duration of calls made by Kievstar subscribers was getting longer, and subscribers were increasingly demanding improved service quality and mobile internet services. “Kievstar has been one of our top customers in Ukraine for a number of years. The contract for the planning and implementation of the DWDM network was placed in August 2006, and it was recently successfully concluded. Considering the tight schedule and the immense scope of this project, our experts in Ukraine have performed a great job, and all that without interrupting the daily operations at Kievstar”, explains Christian Rosner, S&T CEO.
Eight times the capacity
The DWDM network installed by S&T stretches across the whole country, consists of 120 backbone nodes and multiplies Kievstar’s network capacity by a factor of eight, up to 320 Gbit/s. This means that more than four million subscribers can be served simultaneously per network segment. Furthermore, the system is flexible with regard to ever increasing numbers of subscribers and enables Kievstar to enhance service quality and expand the range of non-voice services on offer. Yogesh Malik, CTO (as of H1’08) Kievstar: “The project has become the biggest of its kind in Ukraine. It has secured for a long time the capacity required for further dynamic growth of the leading telecom company in Ukraine.”