ARAX-IMPEX has been involved in telecommunications since 1992. 27 years…. In principle, everything has already been said! Itseems to me that nobody has ever lasted longer in Moldova. But, since the ARAX team is constantly growing and the network and the office space are expanding, the verb “lasted” does not fit. ARAX is being developed. Read the interview with Armen Tsitsinovskii, the permanent head of ARAX.

Good afternoon, Armen. An epic story is not afraid of epic fails. What was the worst ARAX day in the 27-year history?

The April snowfall. Such an emergency has never happened in our entire history. When we counted the “losses”, it became clear that there were hundreds and hundreds of fiber optic breaks in our network. Trees and branches falling under the weight of snow cut the cable like a knife.

How long didn’t you sleep then?

In my opinion, no one at ARAX then slept for several days in a row. The most interesting thing is that on the first day almost the entire team came to work. We walked through the whole city. Everyone perfectly understood that everyone’s hands would be needed that day. The whole team did a good job!

Were there many conflicts with customers?

No. Everyone understood the situation. They asked with hope: „- Soon?”. We formed and reformed about 20 teams. All spread out across the city to eliminate the numerous breaks and weld optics. The backbone network was restored very quickly, in a few hours. Anyway, I shudder every time I remember that day. It was a black day in our long history.

I thought that a black day for all Internet operators was the day when Elon Musk announced that he would hang satellites over the whole Earth and distribute the Internet throughout the world.

Internet. Pasha, well, you’ve been dealing with IT for so many years, although you’re not engaged in its technological part, but you should understand that the radio environment can never be compared with optics in terms of quality.

Why? Mobile Internet in Moldova works pretty well...

It works pretty well, there is no doubt, as long as there is no interference. But gather in one place a couple of tens of thousands of subscribers or send a strong radio signal close to the subscriber. All your quality will collapse instantly. That is what we notice every New Year!

But Musk was thinking when he said that...

I don’t know what Musk was thinking about. But I’ll tell you as a specialist. For a signal from space to come with enough quality, it shall come exactly to you, through your “personal” channel, free from hindrances and interference, it must be of high frequency, but there are no smartphones or other end-user devices, at least of an average budget that can accept it. A device of another capacity is needed. There has been a campaign about the potential dangers of radio waves to the brain even from the current phones. So, believe me, what comes from space and what needs to be sent back will begin to fry our brains well.

So, the future is not with satellites and X G in mobile communications?

Believe me. Nothing beats the optical cable in our time. We need to go to the radio signal at the last mile. Distribute Wi Fi at home, in the office or in a restaurant. Here it makes sense to raise the frequency of the signal. It will cease to overlap with other Wi Fi networks, will not pass through walls until the last entrance, but high-speed high-quality Internet will be available in the apartment.

It’s good to be an specialized expert. You know everything. Not like I, a retrained humanist.

Actually, I’m a teacher of the Russian language and literature, who began his career as a teacher of the Russian language in the village of Norashen, Artashat district of the Armenian SSR ....

Indeed ....?!?

I have half Polish blood, my father was a Pole, principal director at the Chekhov Theater in Chisinau, and AT THAT TIME he was part of the elite of theater directors of the USSR. And my mother is Armenian. Therefore, I’m Armen. When my grandfather died in Armenia, the family pow-wow decided to send me to Armenia. To continue my studies at the institute and help my grandmother. So I started working there.

But you’ve come back?

I came back. In 1992, I established a company. That times, everything was in incipient stage. Bus transportation, tourism to Bulgaria and “light programming and telecommunications”, video processing. Around the same time, we were one of the first to engage in Internet telephony. Remember those times when calling to America from a home phone cost $ 2 or 3 a minute, and with our IP-telephony cards the same call cost 20-30 cents. To certain destinations the price was 20-30 times lower than that of fixed telephony. By the way, we are still issuing DialOk cards and they are still bought.

The yellow ones?

Exactly.

And I thought that they died out along with the dinosaurs...

Yes, the times were legendary. We started by renting a land channel of 64 kilobits and putting a satellite station of 256 kilobits. Then, it seemed that this lightning bird was flying through the wires ... “do you remember how it all began, everything was the first and again!”

Since then, much has changed…

Yes, ARAX has changed a lot. A high-tech company. We’re no longer an Internet provider, but a telecommunications operator. Besides the Internet and telephony and television. Telephony, by the way, is the most time-consuming business. Continuous confirmation of the quality of work, counting of seconds by the Centre of Certification. And, if those times, that you remember as the beginning, we were engaged only in the B2B segment, today we have tens of thousands of home users. This is one of the reasons why we are expanding in terms of both  areas and staff. Clouds are clouds, but sites, databases, and, in general, everything that the end user sees and uses, all this lies, after all, in hardwareon the ground and it is reached through physical communication channels, through such operators as ARAX and our other competing colleagues!

At the dawn it seemed to me that the job of provider job was a cushy one. Just set the hardware and then play chess or read books. Was this an absolute mistake?

Oh yeah. You should visit our departments: programming or administration, or support, commercial one.... any department. Everything boils from morning to evening, and sometimes at night! We have everything, every software from accounting to CRM is developed independently, is tailored for us and is being finalized, added, improved and deepened - endlessly. Sometimes it seems to me that working with a shovel is better than working in telecommunications .... Better for both health and nerves! :-)

I’ve forgot that you are a humanist, just like me. But this gives rise to a slight fear for me. My writing in Russian is far from being perfect. Any old teacher of Russian would have died if she had been given my texts to read. The text will have to be given to you for check....

By the way, my three daughters called me when they were children: ‘father-teacher of Russian”. I’ve probably got them out greatly.

Now you’ll got out me....

Don’t worry, I’ll check and correct it, and won’t berate you. By the way, do you want to hear an old, but quite relevantin out times philological joke?

Do it. 

A student graduates from the Faculty of Philology and goes, as usual, to work as a waitress in a cafe. She works and philologically suffers. Visitors come in and all, as one, ask for “одно кофе”(one coffee). And this “одно” cuts her ears up to the loss of consciousness. And one fine day a handsome man comes in and says: “Один кофе”. Honey poured into her ears. She smiles happily. – She says: - Finally, at last one competent visitor!!!” The client looks at her and adds with a Caucasian accent: “И одын булка пожялуста”.

Pavel Zingan