BT announced today it is further improving its reach into Russia through a new network interconnection agreement with Rostelecom, Russia’s national telecommunications operator.

The agreement will significantly improve BT’s ability to serve its corporate customers across all regions of Russia with its BT Connect portfolio of intelligent network services. BT Connect underpins mission critical applications for leading enterprises from a variety of industry sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, logistics, pharmaceutical and oil & gas industries.

BT already serves around 400 large organisations in Russia, including many of the world’s leading global multinational companies with operations in the country. Many local and international financial service providers rely on BT’s network to connect to the BT Radianz Shared Market Infrastructure, the world’s largest cloud based platform serving the needs of the financial services sector.

Rostelecom operates a highly sophisticated network that spans the whole country. Its national network consists of approximately 500,000 km of backbone infrastructure, providing services to approximately 43 million residential and enterprise customers.

Luis Alvarez, BT president, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America, said “While the global economy is more unbalanced than ever, a growing number of multinational companies are expanding in Russia, including in the financial services sector. The success of that expansion relies heavily on the ability to adapt instantaneously to changing market conditions. High performance, fully secure networked IT services are absolutely key to that ability and BT is already a global leader in delivering such services. By substantially increasing the reach and capillarity of our network services across all Russian regions, this agreement with Rostelecom will help us maximize growth opportunities for our customers in important new markets.”