Penza, 27 October 2015. PenzaNews. Rostelecom has activated its first Wi-Fi access spots in 12 villages of the Penza region, as part of the state digital gap bridging (DGB) program.

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The program aims to provide 10+ Mbps Internet access in residential areas with population of 200-500 people using Wi-Fi.

“The access points where installed in villages that are already connected to the fiber optic network. These include Vysokoe, Kandievka and Podgornoe of the Bashmakovo area; Kryukovo of the Belinsky area; Tsentralnaya Usadba Sovkhoz Mayak and Uvarovo of the Issa area; Vladykino, Ust-Atmis and Kurganovka of the Kamenka area; Arshinovka, Kera and Novaya Pyatina of the Nizhny Lomov area,” the press service of the Penza branch for Rostelecom informed PenzaNews agency.

Each access spot is a cell access station that includes an Ethernet switch, a Wi-Fi router and a circular broadcast antenna, the company representatives added.

“The Internet access in the aforementioned residential areas is available for mobile phones, smartphones, laptops, tablet PCs and other Wi-Fi connectable devices. Each access spot will provide access to three networks: RTOpen, RTFree and RTWi-Fi,” the press service added.

According to Rostelecom, the purpose of RTOpen network is to help users register a personal account with the company and subscribe for a service using the received login and password. At the same time, RTFree network provides free-of-charge access to a limited list of websites defined by the Russian Ministry of Communications and additional resources that vary with the region.

“For example, these are the state services portal or websites of state authorities in the Penza region. Further on, RTWi-Fi network provides full unlimited bandwidth access to the Internet, visit news websites, browse social networks, download audio and video clips, and more. The only requirement is positive account balance of the customer,” the company pointed out.

According to Lev Dyatlov, director of the Penza branch for Rostelecom, the ISP implements new broadband Internet access projects both through company investments and under state projects.

“The main objective of the DGB projet is to provide new telecommunications potential to residents of far-away and less-populated villages of the Penza region. Under the DGB project, we will lay fiber optic cables to 11 villages before the end of 2015, while activation of new access spots is scheduled for February 2016,” he clarified.

The DGB project in the Penza region will be complete in Q4 2018, with Wi-Fi access spots installed in 228 small-scale residential areas.