Trans-Caspian corridor, part 3: who will sell the cable's capacity

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan switched on a 380-kilometre fibre-optic line across the Caspian seabed on 15 October, with Presidents Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Ilham Aliyev at the launch in Baku, according to the Kazakh presidency. The official documents released around the project describe a commercial asset rather than a state programme. The line was built by Kazakhtelecom and AzerTelecom International, their joint venture CaspiLink B.V. is responsible for building and running it, and it was paid for from the operators' own funds without budget financing, the Kazakh government said on 5 August when the marine stage was finished. This is part 3 of a five-part series on the corridor: the route, the landing points, the operators, pricing and regulation.

That ownership model shapes how capacity on the route will be sold. A line financed by two operators through a joint venture has to recover its cost from the circuits and wavelengths it sells, on terms its owners set. The presidency says the line will add international connectivity for Kazakhstan and create conditions for attracting global technology companies and for developing cloud services and artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to the launch release. The launch documents give no price, no lit capacity and no terms for buyers outside the two shareholders.

What the official documents establish

Method: each row is taken from one of two primary documents, the Kazakh presidency's release of 15 October and the Kazakh government's release of 5 August, both published in Russian and translated by Corridor Signal. Figures that do not appear in those two documents, including capacity and cost, are kept out of the table and discussed below with their sources.

What the documents leave out

Capacity. Neither Kazakh government release states a design or a lit capacity; the Azerbaijani presidency's account of the launch gives more than 400 terabits per second, without saying which of the two it is (presidency). Design capacity is the ceiling of what the fibre pairs can carry once fully equipped. Lit capacity is the amount equipped and saleable on the first day, and it grows as the owner adds transmission equipment against orders. A buyer prices against the second number, not the first.

Cost. The Kazakh government's release of 18 June 2024 gave more than 23 billion tenge of operators' investment for a line of 370 km. On that figure, which neither 2026 release repeats, the build cost comes to at least 60 million tenge per kilometre, a Corridor Signal calculation. That is the capital base a capacity price has to recover, before operating costs.

Demand. Kazakhstan's Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development estimates that the route could help more than double the country's international data transit to 21.6 terabits per second in the coming years, the Times of Central Asia reported. The newspaper also reported, citing Tengrinews, that the chairman of Kazakhtelecom's management board, Bagdat Mussin, expects adjustments to the line to continue to the end of 2026, with the benefits felt no earlier than early 2027.

Alternatives. Citing a 2025 Internet Society report, the Times of Central Asia said Russian operators have been the principal suppliers of Kazakhstan's international bandwidth. Part of the value of the Caspian segment to a buyer is therefore diversity: a second path towards Europe that does not cross Russia.

What a buyer still needs to know

The presidency describes the line as part of a new route linking Kazakhstan, other Central Asian countries and China with Europe, and says it can be connected to systems in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, according to the release. The Caspian crossing is one segment of that path. A circuit from Almaty to a European hub would also need terrestrial capacity across Kazakhstan to Aktau, across Azerbaijan and onward through Georgia or Türkiye before a sea crossing or a land route into Europe. The releases do not say whether CaspiLink will sell only the Caspian segment or end-to-end services with partners on either shore.

Four disclosures would settle most of the pricing questions: the lit capacity at commercial launch; whether capacity is sold as leases, as indefeasible rights of use or both; whether operators other than the two shareholders can buy on published terms; and the date of commercial service after the commissioning and testing that the government scheduled for the autumn, according to its August statement. Until the joint venture or its shareholders publish them, the cost of the route to a buyer is unknown, and claims about its price against existing paths cannot be checked.