A PROJECT OF GLOBAL SIGNIFICANCE

In recent years, the capacity of the fibre-optic connection between Europe and Asia hasalmost doubled. The annual growth rate of about 50 per cent actually demonstrates the demand for the volume of Eurasian traffic, which exceeded 5 Tbit/sin 2013.

Back-up TAE

The ground cross-border fibre-optic infrastructure (GCBFOI) is the most obvious option to combat clear inequality between the markets in the region. The existing international GCBFOI of the region consists mainly of bilateral connections. The only multinational chain in the region - Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) with a length of 27,000 km connecting Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and Shanghai (China) - functions more as a network of national highways rather than a single special network.

TAE is not expected to expand due to participating countries'low interest in it. The project stays afloat only thanks to the efforts of the Azerbaijani side that thinks in what ways it can be developed. Until recently, many project participants actually wanted to completely abandon TAE, which would have inevitably led to its collapse.

The construction of the Azerbaijani segment began in 1999, and at the end of 2012, all existing telecommunication nodes of public communications operators in Azerbaijan were connected to TAE. In January 2013, a protocol was signed officially confirming Azerbaijan's presidency of the project in 2013-2015.

Today Azerbaijan is considering TAE as the basis for a joint project to build a Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM). It is not yet possible to say whether these two projects are coupled to each other or not, since any decision on the matter is still pending.

At the same time, the TAE highway will be used as a backup line to ensure the sustainability of the AzNETsegment. In this context, the question of the back-up use of TAE will become topical after the launch of an action plan for the development of broadband Internet in Azerbaijan, covering 2014-2016, the ultimate goal of which is to provide the entire country, including remote rural areas, with high-speed Internet in the range of 10-100 Mbit/s. 

Ambitious TASIM

Unlike TAE, TASIM is one of the most ambitious projects of the recent period that enters a new phase in its development. It has global significance and its purpose is to lay a transnational fibre-optichighway covering Eurasian countries from Western Europe to East Asia.

TASIM is one of the most important non-energy projects implemented by Azerbaijan, which acquires a continental scale. After its final commissioning, TASIM will not only provide Trans-Eurasiantelecommunications, but also change the geopolitics of interconnectedness across the region as it will provide a key alternative to countries that depend on other resource suppliers. It will also turn Azerbaijan into a regional and global telecommunications hub, which in turn will create a number of other possibilities and prospects for the development of the non-oil sector.

The project envisages the creation of the main transit link from Frankfurt (Germany) to Hong Kong (China). The network will bring together the major centres of information exchange in Europe and Asia. The transit line will run through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to Germany. The back-up northern transit link will pass through the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

The TASIM Secretariat makes every effort to promote the project and focuses on attracting new stakeholders. The secretariat has established ties with the European Union, the UN, BSEC, SPECA and other organizations. In September 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted a third resolution in support of TASIM, thus supporting Azerbaijan's initiative to create the Eurasian Alliance (Eurasian Connectivity Alliance - EuraCA) and the construction of the highway.

Work to lay TASIM is expected to start in 2016. At the first stage the leading countries of the region and operators will create a major transit network infrastructure, connecting East and West. This infrastructure will allow TASIM to comply with the commercially attractive and rapidly growing international market for Internet transit. At the second stage it is plannedto use the created transit infrastructure and provide Eurasian countries that have no direct access to the Internet with Internet connection at affordable rates. According to the plan for the development of the national telecommunications infrastructure, new fibre-optic lines will be builtwhile the existing ones will be upgraded and connected to the TASIMnetwork. The second phase of the project will be carried out in accordance with a UN mandate.

Currently, the TASIM project involvesRussia (operator Rostelecom), Kazakhstan (KazTransCom), Turkey (TurkTelecom) and China (China Telecom). Azerbaijan is represented in the project by the Centre for International Relations and Calculations of the Ministry of Communications and High Technology. The Memorandum of Understanding on the project, which will give impetus to its early implementation, was signed in December 2013 in Baku.

Recently, members of the consortium met in Baku again to discuss aspects of afundamental agreement on the implementation of the project. One of the main objectives of the consortium is to reach an agreement on the project, which aims to define its business model, traffic management and distribution of investment and income. By its structure, the document is quite complex, and the parties have yet to study some details. As expected, it will also resolve the issue of laying the Caspian segment (between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan), which is problematic due to the lack of a decision on the status of the Caspian Sea. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Communications of Kazakhstan say that there are legal provisions that make it possible to pass the maritime borderpainlessly.

The infrastructure of the Chinese and Russian part of the highway is fully operational. At the same time, the Russian operator Rostelecom expressed willingness to provide the necessary support for the project and describedthe expansion of its borders if other countries are interested as acceptable.

Kazakhstan's KazTransCom takes an opposite stance on the expansion of the number of TASIM participants as it has the sad experience of the TAE project. TAE involved 19 countries, and each represented by its operator tried to set the highest possible price for transit traffic. Therefore, Kazakhstan intends to defend its point of view so that the operators now represented in the project remain "founding fathers" of TASIM. They must own resources and determine the rates. The remaining countries may join the project as observers and market participants.

In short, the implementation of the TASIM project will help create an open information societyin the region, increase the speed of Internet connections and develop Internet services, which, in turn, will lead to increased competition, development and diversification of regional economies.