Ukraine’s Volia taps Cisco to modernise network

Despite the exigencies of operating under wartime conditions, Ukrainian service provider Volia said it has invested UAH500 million (€13.5 million) in its backbone networks as the first step in modernising its network.

Volia outlines its modernisation plan

Volia has teamed up with Cisco to modernise its network.

The first step saw the group create 11  new backup links with a total capacity of more than 900 Gbps were built and the installation of 200 pieces of equipment to increase the fault tolerance of the support network by more than two times.

Volia said it had also increased the bandwidth of the network 10 times.

Volia’s network covers settlements in 22 regions of Ukraine and has about 34,000 km of its own fibre optic lines. It said that thanks to its network of loing-distance lines, it can quickly direct traffic flows to backup channels to restore services in the event of trunk accidents.

“After the completion of the project, our network will become one of the largest and most flexible in the telecom market of Ukraine. This has already provided new opportunities in building fail-safe and high-speed communication channels for our corporate and wholesale clients and partners. And for residential subscribers, Internet access speed has already increased with minimal delay during peak hours,” said Andrii Val, Volia’s technical director.

“In wartime, it is the reliability and availability of communication that are critically important factors. And we are very happy that it is Cisco technologies that will be able to provide Ukrainian businesses and subscribers with high-quality and reliable Internet,” said Serhiy Martynchuk, head of Cisco’s representative office in Ukraine.

“Since the beginning of the war, Datagroup-Volia has concentrated all its efforts on maintaining and improving the quality of communication services throughout Ukraine. The company’s specialists work 24/7, sometimes risking their lives, carrying out repair work to restore services in liberated cities, and also working on the implementation of a new network and the connection of critical services to it. So far, more than 200 units of new equipment have been installed on the main network. Since February 24, our technical specialists have dealt with more than 40,000 incidents and damage to the network, most of which are directly related to combat operations. Despite constant work on the restoration of damaged lines, we are proud of the fact that we were able to implement the first stage of such an ambitious modernisation project,” said Mykhailo Shelemba, CEO of Volia.