MegaFon, together with China Telecom, has launched a new backbone communication channel between Khabarovsk and Hong Kong. It should significantly speed up access to Chinese services, especially for residents of Siberia and the Far East.
Previously, some of the traffic from Russia to China's infrastructure traveled a long international route – through European transport hubs. Users from the east of the country had to effectively send requests across all of Russia and Europe, even though China is nearby.
Now, data will go directly from Khabarovsk to the China Telecom network. MegaFon claims that the response time to a number of services has been reduced by more than three times. The difference should be noticeable in messengers, games, marketplaces, and other services where connection speed is important.
We see that users' interest in Chinese messengers and marketplaces is growing: traffic in the first quarter of 2026 increased by almost 50% year-on-year.
The new route has become part of the operator's development of the Asian direction of international connectivity. MegaFon continues to strengthen direct traffic exchange with foreign networks to make access to WeChat, Baidu, Taobao, AliExpress, and other popular Chinese services more stable.