Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 22
By Dalga Khatinoglu, Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
Iran has accelerated developing the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) project in its territory and EPEG is expected to become fully operational by late 2016, Iran's Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mahmoud Vaezi said in an exclusive interview with Trend on April 22.
He said Iran has recently signed a 145 million-euro agreement with France's Alcatel to purchase the needed equipment.
"A half of equipment for EPEG has been delivered to Iran by Alcatel and the remaining ones are being supplied," added Vaezi.
In June 2011, a consortium of four leading telecom carriers from four countries signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement for a new cable system called the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG).
The system is to run from Germany across eastern Europe, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Persian Gulf to Barka in the Sultanate of Oman.
The route via Azerbaijan is to be organized using the capacity of Delta Telecom - the EPEG associated partner.
EPEG's design capacity is up to 3.2 terra bits per second, with a total length of 10,000 kilometers, some 9,500 kilometers of which is an onshore fiber cable.
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Follow the authors on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu, @MaksimTsurkov
