By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan will lay internet cables along the Caspian Sea bed, Azernews reports, citing the Kazakh media.

According to the agreement between the governments of the two countries, it is planned to build fiber-optic communication lines along the Caspian Sea bed.

"Currently, the work is underway to determine the operator from the Kazakh side, which owns the backbone lines of communication," the statement reads.

Operators-participants will invest their own funds in the construction of communication lines, the preliminary cost of which is $40 million. The length of the cable on the seabed will be about 380-400 km. The projected data transmission capacity will be no less than 4-6 Tbit/sec. The terms of realization have not been specified yet.

From the Azerbaijani side, the operator of the project is the company AzerTelecom.

The project provides for the transit of internet traffic through the territory of Kazakhstan and the undersea cable to Azerbaijan with further exit to Europe. It contributes to the strengthening of transit potential of the countries, both by increasing transit capacity and at the expense of their diversification, and will create an alternative route for traffic transit.

To note, this digital infrastructure project is part of a large-scale project Digital Silk Way, connecting Europe with Asia through Azerbaijan, which is being implemented by AzerTelecom.