Rostelecom is developing plans for protected data centers with equipment housed underground. A senior company executive described the concept, and another person familiar with the project confirmed the plans.
According to a person familiar with the talks, Rostelecom is already discussing construction of one such facility with Nornickel.
The concept calls for three layers of protection: a backup facility holding copies of data, computing capacity distributed across geographically separate sites, and underground equipment placement to guard against external threats.