Connecting Europe and Asia

RETN, an international network service provider, has used Infinera’s fourth-generation Infinite Capacity Engine (ICE4)-based platform to power RETN’s TRANSKZ network and complete its latest phase upgrade, completed in May 2019.

  • Thursday, 12th September 2019 Posted 5 years ago in by Phil Alsop

The new terrestrial solution connecting Europe and Asia provides the first true alternative to existing subsea cable systems. Enhanced with the latest-generation equipment, the high-performance network supports three diverse paths of similar lengths from Europe to the border of China via Kazakhstan in partnership with Transtelecom JSC, and offers low-latency and high-capacity services linking all major locations in commercial and financial hubs between Europe and Asia.


RETN is one of the fastest-growing independent European providers of Internet transit and connectivity services. It is the only provider that operates its own end-to-end Eurasian network of unique geographical coverage. Stretching between North America and Asia, the RETN network offers differentiated terrestrial connectivity between major markets: Western Europe, Central Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States countries, Russia, and Kazakhstan, running onward to the Chinese border.


The speed and flexibility of deployment and monitoring provided by Infinera are key factors in facilitating exceptional long-haul network performance. The ease of deploying network services with Infinera’s ICE4-based platform enables RETN to quickly deliver reliable, high-speed, low-latency 100G services to meet the ever-increasing demands of global enterprises, as well as international carriers, internet service providers, and content providers.


The TRANSKZ network stretches across a diverse terrain of more than 15,000 kilometers and interconnects critical markets which are currently underserved territories across the route. Working closely with Infinera, RETN completed the final 4,000 kilometers of the main route in Kazakhstan and deployed services on the long-distance network in less than 30 days, accelerating time to revenue.


“Our network segment from Kazakhstan to the border of China, which we upgraded earlier in 2019 to complete the TRANSKZ network, experiences harsh weather conditions. We also anticipated other potential issues we’ve had to face working in these challenging territories. So, we needed to find the right solution, combined with the technical expertise of RETN engineers, the local partner, and the vendor, to ensure RETN received superior network performance,” said Tony O’Sullivan, COO at RETN. “The Infinera team provided us with the best solution to meet our needs while working closely with our team throughout the entire network deployment. Many years of cooperation have proven Infinera’s solutions to be highly reliable and operate successfully through harsh environmental conditions along very long routes.”


“We are delighted to support RETN with the upgrade of TRANSKZ as they continue to find innovative ways for their customers to meet growing volumes of data coming to and from Europe, China, and beyond,” said Bob Jandro, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales at Infinera. “With Infinera’s portfolio, network service providers like RETN are set up for success with solutions that are reliable, agile, and scalable to support the bandwidth increases that customers demand.”