Telesoft SpA, Italian developer of software for telecommunications network management, has set up a joint venture with the Central Scientific Research Institute of Communications, TsNIIS. Called Telesoft Russia, the company employs 50 Russian programmers who will localise Telesoft’s software and create its own telecommunications management systems. The company can already offer software for virtually any customer. For example, it has a software package that enables national carriers such as Rostelecom to automate call-clearing operations. Telesoft Russia also supplies a Groupe Speciale Mobile support and NetKit packages. NetKit is especially interesting for Telesoft’s Russian customers, according to Victor Issaev, advisor to the Russian Minister of Communications. Its beauty is that the Italian network combines different types of switching equipment, from crossbar to digital switches from various suppliers, and so it is very much like the Russian network infrastructure. NetKit can easily manage such a complex system, Issaev said. Carlo del Bo’, director of Italian state telecommunications company Stet SpA’s representative office in Russia, said the joint venture would be about transferring the full know-how to its Russian customers. At present, he said, Western suppliers tend keep to themselves the software supplied with switches. Russia is a nuclear state and as such must know everything about its networks’ management software, said del Bo’. He added that Telesoft Russia is looking to sell its products to Rostelecom to manage strategic connections, such as the Moscow-Khabarovsk link.
