Moscow Wireless Mesh Network To Reach 3.9 Million Homes

Nortel and Golden Telecom, a large Russian Internet service provider, said Thursday they are teaming to build out a large Wi-Fi mesh network in Moscow.

The companies said that the network will provide access to about 3.9 million Moscow households. It will use 5000 access points provided by Nortel. Tests of the network will be completed this summer and, after that, Golden Telecom will commercialize the access in phases.

"Golden Telecom's continuing and successful collaboration with Nortel in deploying advanced communications technologies is important to furthering the development of a competitive communications infrastructure in the Russian Federation," Jean-Pierre Vandromme, Golden Telecom's CEO, said in a statement.

The companies claimed that the network will be secure and will support a host of applications such as voice-over-IP and location-based services such as mapping.