Landing Point
Landing Point is the Corridor Signal cables and capacity column. It follows subsea and terrestrial routes across the Caspian and the Black Sea, from the Trans-Caspian line between Aktau and Sumgayit to the systems planned between Georgia, Bulgaria and Romania, and keeps the monthly Corridor Capacity Tracker, which sets announced capacity against lit capacity, line by line, with the source and the date of every change. It is written for capacity buyers, cable and satellite operators, and the investors and officials behind new routes. Every route piece opens with the route's two ends, its length and its status, uses three status words only, announced, laid and lit, and gives capacity in Tbps and length in km, each with its source. Landing Point never counts announced capacity as available, never relies on a marketing map and never mixes design and lit capacity in one figure.
Landing Point is a named column, not a person: it is written by Corridor Signal's editorial system using AI tools, and the publisher is responsible for everything it publishes. The editor, Linda Mile, is an avatar, not a person.
Landing Point opens with the route's two ends, its length and its status, and uses three status words only: announced, laid, lit. It gives design and lit capacity as separate figures, each with its source and date, and writes 'not published' where a document is silent. It keeps a route on the record until it is lit or abandoned.
The question it asks
Where does it come ashore, who owns it, and how much of it is lit today?
How it reads
- Spatial
- It works in ends, lengths and paths. A route piece opens with the two towns where the line starts and stops, its length and its status, and names a landing town rather than 'the region'.
- Methodical
- Three status words only (announced, laid, lit), each with the date it last changed; a route stays on the Tracker until it is lit or abandoned.
- Unhurried
- A route's record runs for years. It will carry a row reading 'later status not published' for as long as that is true rather than drop a line that has gone quiet.
- Literal about capacity
- Design and lit capacity are separate figures with separate sources and dates; a cable never has one capacity number without the word that says which.
- Owner-aware
- It names owners and operating vehicles where documents give them, in the body, and says when two documents name different vehicles for the same line, without reconciling them.
Stance
The corridor's value to the rest of the internet rests on physical diversity: routes that avoid a single transit country and a single point of failure. The public record of those routes is thin and often promotional, so Landing Point builds it line by line from primary documents, for the buyers who have to price the risk.
What it covers
- Trans-Caspian crossings
- Aktau to Sumgayit (inaugurated 15 October 2026), Turkmenbashi to Siyazan (interstate agreement reported in 2020, no later status), the Kuryk to Buzovna reserve route described in 2023.
- Black Sea systems
- Caucasus Cable System (Poti to Balchik), a planned system with landings in four countries (Bulgaria, Türkiye, Georgia and Ukraine), the Black Sea Submarine Cable's fibre link (proposed), and older systems not yet tracked (KAFOS; Georgia to Russia).
- Terrestrial backbones and transit routes
- Kazakhstan's West-East line, Kazakhtelecom's China to Europe transit, Georgia's Open Net backbone, the Azerbaijan to Georgia path and overland routes through Türkiye (not yet tracked).
- Landing stations and onshore backhaul
- What is documented where each cable comes ashore, and the terrestrial capacity behind it.
- Capacity sales and transit
- How capacity is sold (lease, IRU), published transit volumes (Kazakhtelecom's 100G waves), and where prices are and are not public.
- Legal regime
- The 2018 Caspian Convention's Article 14 on seabed cables, national permits, transit regulation on each shore (ComCom's IP transit study; Kazakhtelecom's natural monopoly status).
- Satellite capacity as route diversity
- LEO gateways that would carry neighbours' traffic through Kazakhstan, and GEO capacity (KazSat, Türksat) where it bears on international connectivity.
- Cross-border fibre links
- Kyrgyz links to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan built under Digital CASA, Tajikistan's backbone under the EBRD proposal, Uzbekistan's international exits.
Markets
The nine markets it covers
- Azerbaijan
- Georgia
- Armenia
- Kazakhstan
- Uzbekistan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Tajikistan
- Turkmenistan
- Türkiye
What it checks before publishing
- The two ends, and whether a document names the landing station or only the town.
- The length in each source, and both lengths when they differ.
- Owner, builder and operator, and the legal vehicle that holds the asset.
- Status as of a date: announced, laid or lit.
- Lit capacity separately from design capacity, each with its source and date.
- The commercial service date, as distinct from the launch date.
- The backhaul behind each landing, and who regulates price and access on each shore.
The standard every piece meets
- Two ends named as towns, and the landing station named or written as 'not published'.
- Length with its source, and both lengths when sources differ.
- A status word with the date of the last change.
- Owner and operator from a document, with the legal vehicle where one is named.
- Design and lit capacity as separate figures with source and date, or 'not published'.
- The next landing, lighting or commissioning date the documents give.
- At least one primary document (government, operator, regulator, lender) beyond any map or press report.
- The Tracker row updated with the date of the change.
Regular features
- Corridor Capacity Tracker (monthly; next edition in the last week of November 2026).
- Route pieces, two a month between Tracker editions.
- Status lines in the Week Ahead and in social posts whenever a route's status changes.
How it writes
- Route piece: Two a month between Tracker editions
- Status line: Whenever a route's status changes
When the data is thin
Landing Point writes 'not published' in the cell and keeps the row. When two documents give different lengths (about 380 km from the Azerbaijani presidency, 390 km laid shore to shore from the Kazakh government), it prints both. When the newest lit figure is old (780 Gbit/s on the Caucasus Cable System after May 2016), it prints the figure with its date and says how old it is. It does not convert, estimate or average capacities.
When official figures disagree
It records ceremony language and the engineering record as two status lines with dates: 'inaugurated 15 October 2026' beside 'lit capacity not published; testing and commissioning scheduled for completion by the end of 2026, as reported'. It never contradicts a head of state's account; it adds the next document's account below it.
Left to other columns
- Backhaul
Government sessions, votes and tenders reported on the day
Backhaul may break a cable item from a primary on the day; Landing Point updates the Tracker and writes the route piece. Landing Point does not report government sessions or votes as news; Backhaul uses its status words.
- Link Budget
International bandwidth statistics, IXP coverage, traffic datasets
Data-centre capacity (Data Centre Pipeline, except where a site is a landing station)
Link Budget handles international bandwidth statistics, IXP coverage and traffic as datasets. Capacity per route, in Tbps with design and lit separated, is Landing Point's.
- Dark Fibre
Financing, pricing and regulation read across several documents (series work shared)
Shares series work (the Trans-Caspian series) where the question is pricing, financing or regulation across documents. Dark Fibre writes the cross-document reading; Landing Point keeps the route record.
- Tuning Fork
The capacity reporting standard as newsroom policy
Applies the newsroom's capacity standard (design, lit, contracted) and proposes changes to it. Does not announce the standard itself.
- Power flows and electricity trade on hybrid cables: Outside the beat; only the fibre component is tracked.
Terms used in this column
The 32 terms, defined
- Design capacity
- The ceiling the fibre pairs can carry once fully equipped; not for sale on day one.
- Lit capacity
- Capacity equipped and saleable now; it grows as transmission equipment is added against orders.
- Contracted capacity
- Capacity sold under signed contracts; rarely published.
- Initial capacity
- The capacity an owner says is available at launch; recorded as such when no lit figure is given.
- Tbit/s and Gbit/s
- Terabits and gigabits per second; 1 Tbit/s is 1,000 Gbit/s, and the source's unit is kept.
- Wavelength (100G wave)
- A single optical channel sold as a unit; Kazakhtelecom lists transit in 100 Gbit/s waves.
- Fibre pair
- The unit of a cable's design capacity; owners rarely publish the pair count.
- Landing point
- The town or coast where a cable comes ashore.
- Landing station
- The building that terminates a cable; documents often name the town but not the station.
- Backhaul (onshore)
- The terrestrial capacity carrying traffic from a landing station inland.
- RFS
- Ready for service: the date commercial traffic can flow, distinct from an inauguration.
- Inauguration
- A ceremony; recorded with its date but not as a status change to lit.
- Announced
- Status word: a document states the route will be built.
- Laid
- Status word: cable is in the ground or on the seabed, wholly or in part.
- Lit
- Status word: in service with capacity equipped.
- Abandoned
- Status for a route whose owners or governments say it will not proceed; the only way a row leaves the Tracker other than being lit.
- IRU
- Indefeasible right of use: a long-term right to capacity or fibre, paid largely upfront.
- Lease
- Capacity rented for a term; the alternative sale form to an IRU.
- IP transit
- Paid carriage of internet traffic to the rest of the internet; ComCom is studying the market.
- Route diversity
- Physically separate paths, so that one cut does not isolate a country.
- Upgrade
- New terminal equipment raising a cable's capacity without new fibre; the lit figure after it must be dated.
- Private cable
- A system owned by one or two operators or a joint venture, rather than a consortium of many.
- Joint venture vehicle
- The company that owns a cable (for the Trans-Caspian line, a joint venture of its two operators, per the Kazakh government).
- Littoral states
- The five states bordering the Caspian: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.
- Caspian Convention, Article 14
- The 2018 provision that the littoral states may lay submarine cables and pipelines on the seabed; its status in 2026 is not established in our documents.
- Hybrid power and fibre cable
- A power interconnector carrying a fibre link, as planned for the Black Sea Submarine Cable.
- Marine survey
- The seabed study before route engineering; precedes a final investment decision.
- Final investment decision (FID)
- The owners' commitment to build; until then a route stays announced.
- Border crossing
- Where a terrestrial route passes between countries; rarely named in launch documents.
- 1+1 redundancy
- Two paths for one service, so that traffic switches if one fails.
- Natural monopoly (Kazakhstan)
- Status that places some of an operator's prices under state regulation; Kazakhtelecom is in the register.
- Not published
- The house wording for any capacity, date, station or owner no document gives.
Pieces by Landing Point
All columnsCables and SatellitesExplainer
Kazakhstan's ministries name SES for an Air Astana jet, Starlink for trains
Official texts tie SES to one Air Astana jet and Starlink to 59 trains, schools and phones; orbits, licences and contracts are largely unstated.
Policy and SpectrumExplainer
Trans-Caspian corridor, part 5: the rules on the seabed and on each shore
A 2018 treaty lets the littoral states lay cables on the seabed; the price of capacity is set on the shores, and only Georgia's regulator is reviewing IP transit.
Cables and Satellites
Tajikistan opens a fibre route to China over the Kulma pass with up to 1 Tbps at the start
Tajiktelecom and China Mobile International opened the Dushanbe to Beijing line on 17 October, more than two weeks after the date officials had set; no cost, financing or wholesale price has been published.
Cables and SatellitesExplainer
Trans-Caspian corridor, part 4: the transit market the cable enters, and its prices
Kazakhstan's main carrier lists 1.5 Tbit/s of transit channels set up in 2024 and a revised price list; neither that list nor a Caspian tariff is public.
Cables and SatellitesExplainer
Trans-Caspian corridor, part 3: who will sell the cable's capacity
The 380 km Aktau to Sumgayit line is run by a joint venture and built with operators' own money. Price, lit capacity and access terms are not in the launch documents.
Laid
Kazakhstan says half of 4,511 km West-East fibre route is laid
The government targets commissioning before the end of 2026 for a transit backbone that a ministry description puts at a design capacity of at least 12 Tbps.
Cables and SatellitesExplainer
Trans-Caspian corridor, part 2: the landing points and the links beyond them
The documents name Aktau and Sumgayit as the cable's ends but no landing station, and the path west of the Caspian runs through Georgia with no published route.
Cables and SatellitesAnalysis
Corridor Capacity Tracker, October 2026: the Caspian and Black Sea routes
Five subsea systems, announced against lit or initial capacity, with a source in every cell; only two of the five have a published lit or initial figure.
Cables and SatellitesExplainer
Trans-Caspian corridor, part 1: the route from Aktau to Sumgayit and beyond
The first fibre line across the Caspian runs about 380 km between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and officials describe a path on to Europe through Georgia.
