• Friday 6 November. VEON reports results for the quarter to 30 September, the company said. The quarter includes Beeline Kazakhstan's launch of Starlink's satellite-to-mobile service on 29 September, according to VEON.
• Saturday 7 November. Kcell's materials for its extraordinary meeting on merging KazNet Media into the operator must be available to shareholders by this date, no later than 10 days before the meeting, according to the notice published on KASE. The notice gives no terms for the merger.
• Monday 9 to Friday 27 November. The ITU Plenipotentiary Conference meets at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center. Member states elect the Secretary-General, the Deputy Secretary-General and the directors of the three bureaux, and choose the 48 members of the ITU Council and the members of the Radio Regulations Board for 2027 to 2030, according to an ITU media advisory.
• Monday 16 November. VEON holds its Capital Markets Day, according to its September announcement.
• Tuesday 17 November. Kcell's shareholders meet at 11:00 Almaty time on the single agenda item, with 18 November as the fallback date if the meeting does not take place, according to the same notice.
• Wednesday 16 December. Approval date for the EBRD's proposed loan of up to EUR 48.4 million for Tajikistan's fibre backbone and rural broadband, according to the bank's project summary.
• Friday 25 December. Turkcell's second 5G licence instalment of USD 408 million falls due, according to its annual report on Form 20-F.
• End of December. The Kazakh government expects the main data centre and energy buildings at Data Center Valley in Ekibastuz to be erected by the end of the year, with commissioning works finished in May 2027 and a first 50 MW facility in operation in June 2027, according to its review of the project on 13 August.

Still without a date in the documents reviewed: an auction under the 5G spectrum caps that Kazakhstan's competition agency proposed on 14 October, BES.media reported, and the commissioning of the West-East fibre line, which the government targets for the end of the year, according to its 6 October summary.

Read on Corridor Signal

The notice states no price, nominal value, payment rate, maturity or buyer rules. It points readers to KASE's lists of digital asset platform participants and its rules for platform operators and custodians. The terms of the issue are therefore not public in the notice, and Corridor Signal does not estimate them.

Two Kazakh outlets reported the placement the next day. Exclusive.kz described the deal as the first issue and placement of digital financial assets on KASE's platform, organised by BCC Invest, a subsidiary of Bank CenterCredit. It says the assets pay periodic remuneration and return their nominal value when the circulation period ends, that KASE charges no fees on the platform until December, and that issuers need no audited financial statements. National Business also names ALTA Telecom as the first issuer and BCC Invest as organiser. Neither report gives the size of the issue. The notice does not say "first": Exclusive.kz says KASE describes it that way, and National Business cites a KASE Telegram post.

ALTA Telecom is already a KASE issuer. Its issuer page describes it as a provider of system and technical maintenance for information and communication equipment, with bonds under the ticker ALTAb1 (ISIN KZ2P00015282) trading on the exchange's alternative market since 16 January 2026. The page lists operating revenue of KZT 6,377.8 million at 1 July 2026 against KZT 3,716.0 million at 1 April, total assets of KZT 9,581.0 million and liabilities of KZT 6,631.4 million. It does not give the bond's size, coupon or maturity, and it carries nothing on the digital asset.

Exclusive.kz says KASE sees the instrument as a financing option for small and medium-sized businesses. Whether other telecom firms follow depends on terms the notice does not disclose. KASE also publishes holder registers for larger telecoms: Corridor Signal has reported on the Alma Telecommunications and ASTEL registers and on the Kcell register ahead of its 17 November vote.

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In the letter, dated 30 October and signed by T. Iskakov, deputy chairman of the management board and chief financial officer, the company says the general meeting of holders of bonds KZ2C00006344 was called on the question of changing the coupon rate, with voting due to close at 18:00. It cites paragraph 6 of article 18-2 of Kazakhstan's securities market law.

The company asked the exchange to halt placement and trading from 30 October until the day after the meeting's decision is published on the website of the financial reporting depository. If holders approve a new rate, the halt runs until the day after the changes to the prospectus are registered with the state. The exchange gives subparagraph 1 of paragraph 77 of its trading rules as the basis and sets the start of the suspension at 2 November.

Neither document gives the proposed rate or the result of the vote. The exchange's page for the bond lists its last coupon rate as 11.5 per cent a year and a circulation period from 10 January 2020 to 10 January 2032, which leaves a little over five years to maturity.

The exchange first announced the meeting in a notice of 15 October, with an agenda covering the coupon rate and the matching changes to the prospectus. Corridor Signal covered that notice in its piece of 20 October and listed the meeting in The Week Ahead for 26 October.

The length of the halt now depends on the outcome. A rejection would end it the day after the decision is published; an approved change would keep the bonds out of trading until the state registers the amended prospectus, a date neither notice estimates.

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The Union of Employers of Information and Communication Technologies (UEICT) launched the event in 2019, and this is its 11th edition, under the theme "Invest in Innovation". It runs over two days for the first time and adds a technology exhibition for startups and technology-focused educational institutions, as well as a panel on women's leadership, the release says. Since 2019 the event has brought together more than 100 speakers, according to Ucom.

The organiser's website puts the summit at Dvin Music Hall on the first day and the Microelectronics International Forum on the second, with support from Armenia's Ministry of High-Tech Industry and Artificial Intelligence. Its programme lists fireside chats, an open innovation panel with Plug and Play and the awards of the 21st International Microelectronics Olympiad. Speakers named include Ricardo Pinto of Nokia and Hassan Mansour of Monty Mobile, and the second day lists presentations from Synopsys, Siemens EDA, Cisco and Microchip Technology, among others, on topics including chip design and verification, AI networks and physical AI.

The site lists more than 25 exhibition booths, 12 free spaces for startups, a workshop zone and three rooms for business meetings. An August announcement reported by ARKA spoke of more than 50 booths; the site does not say when its figure was set.

Ucom's general director, Ralph Yirikian, attended a press meeting before the event with the heads of Yandex Armenia and Synopsys Armenia and the chairman of UEICT, among others. "Technological advancement is impossible without continuous investment," he said in the release, which does not say how much Ucom contributes as a partner.

Corridor Signal has reported this month on Armenia's telecom revenue statistics and on Firebird's AI cloud in the country.

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The bank's release on the signing says the money will add battery storage to the group's renewable platform by 2029 and develop a data centre powered by hybrid renewable energy. Leah Gutierrez, ADB's director general for Central and West Asia, said ADB helps mobilise long-term capital in sectors where long-term financing remains limited. İpek Ilıcak Kayaalp, chair of Rönesans, said the financing would help accelerate investments in renewable energy and digital infrastructure.

The project data sheet lists the Rönesans Corporate Infrastructure Loan Project, number 60163-001, as approved on 14 August 2026 from ADB's ordinary capital resources, under the information and communication technology sector.

A $375 million facility

ADB's loan is one part of a larger deal. The report and recommendation to ADB's board, dated July 2026, says it belongs to a five-year syndicated corporate facility of $375 million with a grace period of up to two years. The International Finance Corporation is lead arranger and commits up to $150 million. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, at up to $75 million each, and ADB are named as potential participants. On those figures ADB holds 20 per cent of the facility and IFC 40 per cent, on Backhaul's arithmetic.

The proceeds are for general corporate purposes, the paper says, with a focus on two parts of Rönesans' capital spending: wind power and battery storage within a pipeline whose size is redacted, and a hyperscale-ready data centre campus with advanced cooling, whose first phase is expected to have a capacity of 22 megawatts. The paper presents the loan as stable, long-term dollar funding that diversifies the group's funding base while domestic and regional markets are constrained.

What the bank will measure

The paper's results framework sets the targets. By 2029 at least 50 MW of wind capacity, 50 MWh of colocated battery storage and at least 22 MW of energy-efficient data centre IT load are to be installed. By 2030 at least 22 MW of IT load is to be available to tenants, with an annual power usage effectiveness of 1.30, 90 GWh a year of extra generation, emissions from the wind projects cut by at least 39,060 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and at least seven operating jobs. A footnote says the data centre will be colocation-based and air-cooled and is expected to meet green building standards of at least LEED Gold equivalent. One of the stated assumptions is that a partnership with an experienced global data centre operator is maintained.

The paper does not name the site, the city or that operator. In September Digital Realty and Rönesans Infrastructure announced a joint venture for a campus in Ankara designed for more than 22 MW of IT capacity and due for completion in 2028, according to the US operator's release. The figures are close, but neither document links the ADB loan to that project, so the two cannot be treated as the same build on the published record.

Against the national target

ADB ties the project to the government's AI Action Plan for 2026 to 2030, which, the paper says, aims to take Türkiye's data centre capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2030 and draw $10 billion of private investment into data centres and other AI infrastructure. A 22 MW first phase is 2.2 per cent of that gigawatt, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The paper also gives the power context: gross electricity consumption rose 2.1 per cent to 360.9 TWh in 2025 and is projected at 455.3 TWh by 2030 under the national energy plan.

The signing came four days before Türk Telekom signed a $1 billion club loan for 5G and fibre. The ADB documents give no interest margin, no drawdown schedule and no split of the $75 million between energy and the data centre; the paper lists five linked annexes, client information and implementation arrangements among them, and none is published with it. The project data sheet lists an environmental and social action plan dated June 2026 as the only other published project document.

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Revenue fell to TL 3,429.6 million from TL 3,709.9 million, down 7.6 per cent, in the unconsolidated statements on the Public Disclosure Platform. Gross profit more than halved, to TL 200.9 million from TL 451.2 million, so the gross margin fell to 5.9 per cent from 12.2 per cent, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The company swung to an operating loss of TL 133.0 million from an operating profit of TL 15.2 million. A lower tax charge, TL 12.1 million against TL 91.0 million, explains why the net loss still narrowed.

The third quarter alone went the other way. Revenue rose to TL 1,563.4 million from TL 1,398.7 million, up 11.8 per cent, operating profit reached TL 59.5 million against TL 14.8 million, and net profit was TL 93.2 million against TL 17.3 million. Total assets stood at TL 7,022.8 million on 30 September, up from TL 5,610.8 million at the end of 2025.

The filing does not break revenue down by customer or product. Turkish operators are raising money for networks: Türk Telekom signed a $1 billion club loan on 26 October to finance mainly 5G and fibre, which we reported on 31 October, and the country's 5G count passed 45 million, the regulator BTK said on 23 October.

Another listed vendor disclosed enterprise data centre work the same week. Netaş said on 23 October that its wholly owned subsidiary Netaş Bilişim Teknolojileri had signed two contracts worth USD 6,333,000 before VAT with a banking customer, for data centre switches, routers and control and management components and for branch network switches. The notice does not name the bank.

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The targets sit in the information and communication technologies section, on page 229 of the programme, which Presidential Decision 11934 approved on 27 October. The same table sets mobile broadband subscription density at 88.8, 94.0 and 96.0 per cent for the three years, and internet use among 16 to 74 year olds at 90.9, 92.3 and 94.0 per cent. The 2026 column is marked as an estimated outturn and the 2027 column as the programme.

The fibre path asks for 1.6 percentage points of gain in 2026 and 2.0 in 2027, or 3.6 over the two years, on a Corridor Signal calculation. The programme does not state the base for density. Dividing the 10,698,289 fibre subscriptions that the second-quarter market data report of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) counts at the end of June by the 86,092,168 population the report cites gives 12.4 per cent, on a Corridor Signal calculation, which sits between the 2025 figure and the 2026 estimate.

206 infrastructure operators and 720,012 km of fibre

The programme's description of the sector says that 206 operators had been authorised for infrastructure operation as of June 2026, in order to build infrastructure-based competition. BTK's report gives the same 206 under notification-based authorisation and adds 14 under rights of use.

Those operators laid about 82 thousand km of fibre in the past year, the programme says, lifting total fibre length by 12.9 per cent to 720,012 km in the second quarter of 2026. BTK's series shows 637,668 km a year earlier, and says the total includes backbone and access routes that operators lease as well as own. The two documents agree on the figures.

They differ on 5G. The programme says 5G has been offered in all 81 provinces since 1 April 2026 and that the number of active 5G subscribers is close to 44.3 million; its figure of 102.2 million with machine-to-machine lines refers, on BTK's numbers, to total mobile subscribers. BTK's report gives 44,268,946 as its 5G real-user count, which excludes machine-to-machine lines, and 26,102,884 as its count of active 5G subscribers. The programme's number matches the first, though its label is the one BTK uses for the second, as the earlier report on the 44.5 million count set out.

The measures: software, cyber security and artificial intelligence

The programme's measure table for the sector, on pages 227 and 228, names a lead agency for each measure, marked (S), with partners beside it. The numbers refer to paragraphs of the Development Plan.

• Measure 579.2 backs wider use of standards in software and ICT services. The Ministry of Industry and Technology leads, with the Public Procurement Authority, the Turkish Standards Institution (TSE) and TÜBİTAK. It is to complete a Software Strategy and Action Plan.
• Measure 581.5 strengthens the national cyber security technical base. The Cyber Security Presidency leads, with TÜBİTAK, and the first listed activity is a needs analysis and project design for backing up critical public information systems.
• Measure 582.1 supports domestic cyber security products abroad. The Ministry of Industry and Technology leads, with the Ministry of Trade and the Cyber Security Presidency, on conformity assessment, testing and certification, and access to international markets.
• Measure 591.1 deepens cooperation on artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Industry and Technology leads, with KOSGEB, TÜBİTAK and the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM). Under the Pre-Competitive Collaboration Programme, a call for sector-specific Turkish large language models is to encourage adapting domestic models to industries.

The remaining measures, 592.1 to 592.8, concern audiovisual content and broadcasting. RTÜK, the broadcasting regulator, leads four of the five, including a new forum of broadcasting regulators from Turkic-speaking states (measure 592.6). In measure 592.7, RTÜK and BTK are to follow developments in broadcasting technology and prepare a sector analysis report. That is the only line in the table that names BTK.

The table lists no measure on fibre roll-out, spectrum or access pricing. The fibre target therefore stands without a stated delivery action in this section. The programme also records that Türkiye's first Cyber Security Board met on 5 May 2026 and that the 2026 to 2030 Türkiye Artificial Intelligence Action Plan was published on 18 August 2026.

Anadolu Agency, which reported the programme's publication, led with the macroeconomic frame: growth of 4.2 per cent forecast for 2027 and year-end inflation of 21 per cent targeted. Fibre work outside the programme runs on separate tracks, such as the northern Cyprus fibre protocol and the financing behind Türk Telekom's $1bn club loan.

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The figures are in the sector description of the programme published in the Official Gazette on 27 October. It adds that cable internet stayed flat at 7.1 per cent over the same period and that the incumbent operator's share of the fixed market stood at 53.1 per cent in June 2026. The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) published the underlying market data report on 30 September, and its table is below.

Shares, the total row and the Q2 2025 composition are a Corridor Signal calculation from BTK's subscription counts; the change column for each technology is BTK's own. The total of 21,189,561 matches the 21.2 million fixed subscriptions in the report's foreword, and the same sums reproduce the programme's 46.4 and 37.8 per cent for DSL.

DSL lost 1,606,896 lines in the year, while fibre added 1,927,720, so fibre's gain exceeded DSL's loss by 320,824 on a Corridor Signal calculation. On Corridor Signal calculations from the same table, the fixed market as a whole grew by 461,892 lines, or 2.2 per cent, and fibre's share rose from 42.3 per cent a year earlier to the 50.5 per cent BTK reports. DSL fell 4.2 per cent in the quarter alone, against 16.7 per cent over twelve months, and fibre to the home grew 26.4 per cent over the year while fibre to the building shrank 6.2 per cent.

The programme's table of broadband indicators, on page 226, gives a different aggregate, covering fixed and mobile together. It lists broadband subscriptions of 96,383 thousand in 2024 and 97,443 thousand in 2025, with 98,500 thousand estimated for 2026 and 101,000 thousand set as the 2027 programme figure. Density, given in per cent, runs at 112, 113, 114 and 116 across the four years. For June 2026 the programme's text gives 100.8 million broadband subscriptions, up 3.5 per cent, while BTK's table gives 100,846,626 against 97,361,083, which is 3.6 per cent.

The programme does not name the incumbent. BTK's market share table lists TTNet first with 53.07 per cent of fixed broadband subscribers and 54.73 per cent of revenue, followed by Superonline with 15.06 per cent of subscribers and 18.50 per cent of revenue, and Turksat with 7.40 and 3.26 per cent. Turknet holds 6.92 per cent of subscribers and Vodafone Net 6.14 per cent. Internet service providers also accounted for 51.6 per cent of the complaints BTK received in the quarter, as the complaints piece reported.

Copper retirement has also begun in Kazakhstan, where Turkestan became the first Kazakh city to retire ADSL lines. Separately, Türk Telekom signed a $1bn club loan on 26 October for 5G and fibre.

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The same query returns 267 registered and 224 routed for Kazakhstan, 176 and 155 for Georgia, and 9 and 8 for Turkmenistan. We ran all nine country queries on 30 October; each reported the same data point, 28 October 2026 at 00:00 UTC, the latest available.

Registered and routed counts are as returned by RIPEstat. The last two columns are on a Corridor Signal calculation.

The two columns come from different records. The RIPEstat documentation for the country-asns call says registered networks are "based on registration information made public by the Regional Internet Registries", while the routing figure is "based on the data collected with the RIPE NCC's RIS system". The call returns only the two totals by default, and its data points follow the times RIS dumps are created, at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 UTC.

RIS, the Routing Information Service, is described by the RIPE NCC as a routing data collection platform that gathers BGP data through remote route collectors, typically located at internet exchange points, with volunteer networks peering with them. The routed count is taken from that collected data. A registered network that does not is a gap between two records. The documentation does not say why a given network is missing, so the figures show no more than that.

On our calculation, 1,729 of the 2,085 registered networks in the nine states are routed, or 82.9 per cent. Türkiye accounts for 215 of the 356 that are not, because its routed share of 80.7 per cent is the lowest in the group. The other eight sit between 83.9 per cent (Kazakhstan) and 88.9 per cent (Turkmenistan), a narrow band; in Turkmenistan the difference is one network.

The routed count is a useful denominator for other measures. Our analysis of exchange-point coverage used the Internet Society's Pulse tracker, whose page for Türkiye puts active networks at 881, against RIPEstat's 897 routed. The figures are close but not equal, and neither source says its count follows the other's rules, so a coverage percentage from one should not be applied to a count from the other. The earlier piece found Georgia at 21 per cent coverage and Tajikistan at 97 per cent; the routed counts above, 155 and 39, show how different the bases are.

The counts sit apart from the infrastructure stories we cover, such as Kazakhstan's west-east fibre route. Türkiye's 897 routed networks are more than the other eight states combined, which total 832. RIPEstat gives counts, not traffic, size or ownership.

RIPEstat refreshes the data three times a day, so a repeat query will move the figures. We will rerun the nine queries for a later edition of this column.

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The ministry's release is the only official text reviewed here that names SES. It says the project with the international satellite provider covers an Airbus A321LR, and that the airline's own technicians do the installation. Promotion terms, dates and fleet plans are in our report on the flight; this piece looks at the structure behind it.

Aircraft and trains: SES in the air, Starlink on the rails

The release says the ministry worked with international satellite operators, authorised bodies and market participants, through negotiations, agreed operating terms and regulatory decisions. It prepared changes to legislation and to the requirements for non-geostationary satellite systems, with special conditions for air and water transport that removed regulatory barriers to connection. It also agreed with the operators that Kazakh law, security requirements included, would be followed. It does not say which operators, or whether SES is one of them.

On trains, the digital ministry's release says only that satellite communication already works on rail transport. The transport ministry is more specific. Its release of 9 September 2026 says the first pilots with the low-orbit OneWeb and Starlink systems ran in 2025 on five routes, including Astana to Almaty, and that as of 8 September Starlink internet was available in 59 trains on 31 routes, covering more than 770 carriages. It planned to equip 124 trains, or 1,235 carriages on 50 routes, by the end of September.

The government's summary of the digital minister's report to a 6 October session gives a later scale: internet in 1,500 carriages across 124 trains on 50 routes, with work continuing to connect seven aircraft and 50 tourist locations. That summary names no operator, so it does not say whether every one of those carriages uses Starlink.

Villages, schools and phones: Starlink and OneWeb

Starlink has the clearest official paper. A news item of 13 June 2025 on the site of the Otandastar Foundation, reporting the digital ministry's agreement and quoting the minister, describes an agreement with Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary, under which the company follows Kazakh law, terminals are bought, operated and registered under it, and public sales were expected from the third quarter of 2025. It names rural schools, health facilities, mobile units and infrastructure sites as users, and says that until then Starlink had served only schools in a pilot. The 6 October summary adds a second role: text messaging and a basic level of internet nationwide through Direct-to-Cell, with Beeline and Starlink Mobile, covered in our report on the launch.

Beyond the 2025 rail pilots, OneWeb appears in official texts mainly as a name. A government statement of 4 July 2025 lists OneWeb, Starlink, Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology and Amazon Kuiper as companies Kazakhstan is collaborating with and says 328 more remote settlements would be connected by the end of 2025, with investment above 38.6 billion tenge. It does not assign settlements to a system. The village and school counts for each system come from the minister's October reply to deputies as the press reported it, set out in our report on the commercial licences, not from an official text.

Orbits, licences and who contracts with whom

The release refers to requirements for non-geostationary systems but does not give the orbit of the SES service. SES's own 2021 release, on a memorandum with the Republican Center for Space Communications, a subsidiary of the ministry, describes its O3b mPOWER system as sitting in medium Earth orbit about 8,000 km up, and says the parties would explore service agreements and an in-country gateway. It is an agreement to explore, it predates the airline project, it does not mention aircraft, and nothing in the 2025 or 2026 texts ties that network to Air Astana. The transport ministry describes OneWeb and Starlink as low-orbit systems; the other official texts give no orbit.

The contract chain differs by system. Starlink's agreement is with the ministry itself. SES's 2021 memorandum was with a ministry subsidiary, while the 2026 project is described only as cooperation, so the release does not say whether the airline, the ministry or both hold the contract. For licensing, the minister said Starlink and OneWeb obtained commercial licences on 2 October, again as the press reported, and our explainer on Starlink's legal terms notes that the conditions are unpublished. Whether SES holds, or needs, a separate licence for aircraft is not stated.

Still open in the published record: the SES network and orbit for aircraft, the operator behind the October train count, the licence terms for all three, and whether the aviation rules sit inside the same regime as the consumer licences.

Read on Corridor Signal

The partnership held 47,457,435 of the company's 50,572,714 common shares, all of which are outstanding, and was the only holder of 10 per cent or more, the exchange notice shows. Alma Telecommunications, listed under the ticker ALTV, replaced most of its board on 30 September; Corridor Signal's review of board changes at listed Kazakh telecoms noted then that the board notice did not identify the shareholder behind the change. The new filing names the majority holder, but does not say who stands behind AT Acquisition Corp.

A second notice the same day covers ASTEL. Arna-Sprint Data Communications JSC owned all 226,000 outstanding common shares, which the ASTEL notice puts at 97.00 per cent of all outstanding shares once the 6,990 outstanding preferred shares are counted. ASTEL has 500,000 authorised common shares, of which 226,000 are outstanding.

The notices list only holders of 10 per cent or more, so they do not show how the remaining shares are spread, how many minority holders there are, or whether any of them hold shares through nominees.

The exchange published similar shareholder information for Kcell. Its update, published a day later, showed its two largest holders unchanged ahead of its 17 November vote, as Corridor Signal reported in its brief on the Kcell register.

On Corridor Signal's arithmetic, other holders account for 6.16 per cent of Alma Telecommunications, and the preferred shares, whose holders the notice does not name, make up the other 3.00 per cent of ASTEL's outstanding shares. Neither notice gives any change in holdings since the previous quarter.

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The contracts came from two tenders, according to the disclosure to the Public Disclosure Platform: one to buy switches, routers and central control and management layer components for data centres, and one to buy network switches for the customer's branches. Netaş did not name the customer or give the delivery schedule or the split between the two contracts.

Five days later, ARD Grup said on 28 October that it had received an order from a private company for NVIDIA-based IT equipment to be used in the artificial intelligence infrastructure of a customer whose end user is in the United Kingdom. The order is worth US$662,400 including VAT, or TL 32,980,366, and ARD expects it to add to revenue and profit. Neither company named its customer. ARD's disclosure carried an English translation and says the Turkish text prevails if the two differ; Netaş published its notice in Turkish only. ARD gave the order's expected start as 27 October.

Alcatel Lucent Teletaş published its nine-month financial report on 27 October. Demand for GPU capacity in the region is covered in Corridor Signal's report on the Firebird export licence for 45,000 NVIDIA GPUs, and the cost of power for Turkish data centres in its analysis of large-user electricity charges.

The disclosures give contract values but no margins, so the effect on either company's results is not stated beyond ARD's expectation of a positive contribution.

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Ilyasov said the additions would be made up of 7.4 GW of base-load generation and 5.9 GW of renewable capacity, and that they would leave the country with a 20 per cent surplus of generating capacity. The government's release on the session names AI infrastructure and large data centres among the loads the new plants are meant to cover. It does not say how much of the 13.3 GW is meant for them, which plants would serve them or in which year each plant would come online.

A 27.1 GW system that used more power than it made

The power system now comprises 254 generating sources, 172 of them renewable, with total capacity of 27.1 GW, Ilyasov said. Coal-fired plants account for 13.7 GW, gas-fired plants for 7.1 GW and large hydroelectric plants for 2.5 GW. Last year generation reached a record 123.1 billion kWh, while consumption was 124.6 billion kWh.

Set against installed capacity, the plan would add the equivalent of about 49 per cent of today's system in a little over three years, on Corridor Signal's arithmetic. The release gives no figure for plants to be retired, so the net gain could be smaller.

The plan follows a shorter push for this year. At a government meeting on 13 October a deputy energy minister, Yerlan Akbarov, said Kazakhstan planned to commission about 2.4 GW of conventional capacity in 2026 to reduce the electricity deficit, and that output in the first nine months had reached 91.7 billion kWh, 102 per cent of the level a year earlier, against a full-year forecast of 126.5 billion kWh, the government said. Our report on the nine-month output set those figures against the country's data centre plans.

A 7.8 GW coal programme alongside renewables

Ilyasov also described a national project, "Development of coal generation", with investment projects totalling about 7.8 GW. It covers 19 projects: eight new plants with 5.3 GW and 11 expansion and modernisation projects with 2.5 GW. Among them are the Ekibastuz GRES-3 power station, a thermal plant in Kurchatov and three combined heat and power plants in Kokshetau, Semey and Ust-Kamenogorsk. The release does not say how much of the coal programme falls within the 2029 window, so the 7.8 GW and the 7.4 GW of base load cannot be compared directly.

On renewables, Ilyasov said their share of electricity output reached 8.5 per cent in the first nine months of 2026, against a target of 7 per cent. He cited auctions and large solar initiatives, among them a 300 MW plant by China Energy and Tumar Commerce projects of up to 1 GW, and said at least 8.4 GW of new renewable capacity was expected by the end of 2035, including about 1.8 GW of solar. Small distributed generation for businesses has grown fivefold since 2024 after legislative amendments, he added.

Data centres are a small share on official numbers

The government's most recent data centre capacity figures are far smaller than the generation plan. After a session on 6 October it said data centres with a combined 186 MW were planned for commissioning in 2027, followed by another 109 MW in the second quarter of 2028, and described the Data Center Valley project as having a capacity of at least 1 GW, in its account of the digital strategy session. We reported the 295 MW target at the time.

The 295 MW planned for 2027 and 2028 equals about 2.2 per cent of the 13.3 GW, by our calculation, and the 1 GW described for Data Center Valley would equal about 7.5 per cent. Generating capacity and a data centre's power draw are different measures: a plant's output varies with fuel, weather and maintenance, and the government gives no load factor for either.

Grid connection is a separate question. The national grid operator KEGOC is piloting a demand response mechanism, as our earlier report on the grid described, and the 29 October release does not discuss transmission lines or connection points for large users.

The two releases give three figures to test against later reports: from 29 October, 13.3 GW of new capacity by the end of 2029 and the 20 per cent capacity surplus that is meant to follow; from 13 October, the 2.4 GW of conventional capacity due this year.

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A daily package switches on when the monthly fee falls due and the balance is too low to pay it, and it renews each day until the account holds enough for the monthly charge. If the balance cannot cover even the daily package, service is suspended until the customer tops up by enough to pay for the month. The package includes unlimited calls to other MegaFon Tajikistan subscribers, minutes to other networks in Tajikistan, a data allowance and SMS where the monthly plan includes them, each at one thirtieth of the monthly allowance. The notice says the price depends on the base tariff but gives no figure for Life.

The service began on the operator's "Sozdavay 2.0" plan. A June notice set the start for 18 June 2026 and gave the price formula: the monthly fee divided by 30, plus 30 per cent. Its worked example is a monthly package of 90 minutes, 90 GB and 150 SMS at 186.5 somoni, which becomes a daily package of 3 minutes, 3 GB and 5 SMS at 8.09 somoni a day. On that example, a customer who stayed on daily packages for 30 days would pay about 242.7 somoni, roughly 30 per cent more than the monthly fee, by our calculation.

The October notice says the daily packages proved a convenient solution, which is why they are being extended to the Life tariff. It does not say how many customers use that tariff or how many have used daily packages since June.

The operator's tariffs page lists six monthly packages under its Sozdavay 2.0 plan, all with unlimited on-net calls, unlimited night use and the IVI and Oila TV services: 50 minutes and 28 GB for 84.50 somoni, 50 minutes and 40 GB for 102.50, 50 minutes and 45 GB for 109.50, 100 minutes and 50 GB for 126.50, 170 minutes and 60 GB for 154.50, and 200 minutes and 150 GB for 286.50. The page does not list a Life tariff.

The change is the operator's second published service move in a month, after it handed its wired broadband customers to Tojiktelecom on 19 October. Elsewhere in the corridor, Mobiuz in Uzbekistan set fees UZS 10,000 higher on 20 older plans from 3 November, with allowances unchanged.

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Operating profit fell in both periods, by 11.9 per cent to TL 19.6 billion over the half and by 21.8 per cent to TL 8.9 billion in the quarter. The half-year result before tax rose because of two lines below operating profit: net finance costs, helped by a monetary gain of TL 10.7 billion against TL 2.4 billion a year earlier, and a smaller loss from equity-accounted investees.

The monetary gain is not cash. Turkcell reports under IAS 29, the standard for hyperinflationary economies, so its figures are expressed in lira of 30 June 2026 purchasing power and its comparatives are restated with the general price index of the current period, the filing says. Under that standard a company with more monetary liabilities than monetary assets records a gain as prices rise, because the real value of what it owes falls. In its second-quarter commentary the company says higher foreign-exchange losses, driven mainly by a larger net short foreign-exchange position tied to 5G investments, were partly offset by monetary gains after the 5G licence was capitalised. The pages reviewed do not define the line or give the monetary position behind it.

How the half and the quarter differ

Figures are TL million from the income statement, in lira of 30 June 2026 purchasing power, with costs and losses in brackets. Changes and first-quarter amounts, which are the half-year figure less the second quarter, are the Data Desk's calculation.

The three changes add up: -2,643.6 plus 1,838.3 plus 2,719.3 is 1,914.0. The monetary gain equals 56.1 per cent of first-half profit before tax and 54.0 per cent of finance costs, against 17.3 per cent of finance costs a year earlier.

The half-year improvement in net finance costs came in the first quarter, when Turkcell had net finance income of TL 1,679.2 million against net finance costs of TL 501.5 million a year earlier. In the second quarter net finance costs rose to TL 2,114.2 million from TL 1,771.9 million even though the monetary gain more than quadrupled, and the gain equalled 76.2 per cent of profit before tax.

The loss from equity-accounted investees, TL 81.5 million in the half against TL 2,800.8 million, is the largest positive contributor to the rise in pre-tax profit. The commentary says the carmaker TOGG improved its financial performance year on year as it scaled its operations, giving a more favourable contribution to the group's net income. The pages reviewed do not say how much of the TL 2,719.3 million swing is Togg's.

Quarterly amounts from different releases do not add. Turkcell's first-quarter Form 6-K gave net income of TL 4,634 million, while the half-year figure less the second quarter is TL 4,959.5 million, a difference consistent with the restatement of comparatives.

Prices, revenue and the December dividend

The consumer price index in the notes stands at 129.99 at 30 June 2026, 110.39 at 31 December 2025 and 98.40 at 30 June 2025, a rise of 17.8 per cent in six months and 32.1 per cent in twelve, the Data Desk calculates. The release gives second-quarter consumer price inflation of 32.1 per cent year on year. Turkcell's chief executive says the company has revised its year-end inflation assumption to 28 per cent and keeps its full-year guidance. If that is measured as the index at 31 December 2026 against 31 December 2025, the index would end the year near 141.3, a rise of about 8.7 per cent in the second half. The filing does not say what monetary gain Turkcell expects.

Total revenue grew 5.6 per cent to TL 144.9 billion in the half and 2.5 per cent to TL 71.8 billion in the second quarter, on figures restated into current lira. The release's guidance is for 5 to 7 per cent real revenue growth and, in the pages reviewed, does not define real. Because both years are already in June 2026 lira, these growth rates are inflation-adjusted on that basis; the release does not say whether the guidance is measured the same way.

Turkcell paid no dividend in the first half of 2026, against TL 4,835.0 million in the first half of 2025, the cash flow statement shows. The filing records an accrued dividend liability of TL 8,791.7 million, payable on 9 December 2026. The board proposed on 17 March a gross dividend of TL 4.00 a share, TL 8.8 billion in total, and the annual general meeting approved it on 7 May, the company's first-quarter activity report says. The payment equals 9.8 per cent of the TL 89.3 billion of consolidated cash at 30 June, the Data Desk calculates. Corridor Signal has covered the company's licence costs and net debt and its resumed share buyback.

Next release: Turkcell plans to publish its July to September results on 9 November 2026 after the close of trading on Borsa Istanbul, Hisse.net reports, citing a notice the company filed on the Public Disclosure Platform on 20 October. The report mentions no results call.

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Two later papers give other numbers for 2026. A summary of a government session on 6 January 2026 plans an additional 1.9 thousand villages for the year, and Corridor Signal has reported 370 villages connected in 2026 against a plan of 1,600, from the government's summary of a 6 October session. With about two months of 2026 left, this analysis sets the three plans side by side and lists what the papers do not say.

What was announced and what exists

The papers of 21 October 2025 are the Deputy Prime Minister's report and a government summary of the session chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov. The January summary is of a session that Bektenov also chaired, with Madiyev among the speakers. Corridor Signal read the English-language texts; it could not open the Kazakh-language version of the October report, which may carry figures that the English text does not. The percentages below are Corridor Signal's calculation.

A main line reaches a village; a local network takes fibre to homes. In the English text of the October report the first stage is a count and the second only a target, so the papers reviewed contain no count of villages where households can already connect. The January summary says only "high-speed internet access" and does not say which technology its 2.6 thousand and 1.9 thousand count. The 323 billion tenge for the period to the end of 2027 is not itemised in the papers reviewed; divided by 4,786 villages it is about 67 million tenge a village, an average and not a unit cost.

Three places where the figures need care

First, the year-end count matches October. The January summary says high-speed internet access had been provided to 2.6 thousand rural settlements by the end of 2025, close to the 2,606 reported on 21 October. If both count the same thing, few villages joined in the 71 days from 21 October to 31 December 2025, so a goal of more than 3,000 by the end of 2026 would have to be met almost wholly in 2026.

Second, the plan for 2026 appears three times. Meeting the October 2025 goal would put at least 5,606 villages on main lines, or 90.7 per cent of 6,179, which fits the 90 per cent in the session summary. The January plan of 1.9 thousand villages would take the count from 2,606 to about 4,506, or 72.9 per cent, and the October 2026 plan of 1,600 to 4,206, or 68.1 per cent. The January plan is about 300 villages above the October one, and the October plan is at least 1,400 below the 3,000. Each could count a different stage, or a plan may have changed, and none of the papers reviewed says which. A second page of the January session says that in the current and coming years more than 3,000 villages will be provided with high-speed internet through fibre lines, a wider window than the end of 2026.

Third, 90 per cent has two dates. The October session summary ties it to the end of 2026. The Deputy Prime Minister's report ties fibre lines to 90 per cent of rural settlements to the end of 2027, under the national project Affordable Internet, and says the same measures will leave more than 90 per cent of villages with high-speed internet by wired means. Ninety per cent of 6,179 villages is about 5,560, roughly 775 more than the 4,786 with household networks, and the papers do not say how those villages would be served. Corridor Signal also reported a programme figure of 3,781 villages with fibre by 2027 from a July 2025 government release, in the same report; the 4,786 are 1,005, or 26.6 per cent, more, and the papers do not say whether the two count the same thing. Corridor Signal reported that the World Bank's appraisal for its DARE project counts 1,214 villages in four regions that an earlier programme linked to the backbone but where no network reaches homes, so the stage between a main line and a home connection has its own count there.

Three items would settle most of this: a statement of which stage the 2.6 thousand counts, a statement of what the 1.9 thousand and 1,600 plans count and why they differ, and a count of villages with household networks. None appears in the English-language papers reviewed.

Dates to watch: the end of 2026, when the goal of more than 3,000 further villages on main lines and the plans of 1.9 thousand and 1,600 villages fall due, together with the West-East backbone, which Corridor Signal reported half laid and which the Times of Central Asia says has more than 2,200 km laid of about 4,500 km, with construction scheduled for completion by then; and the end of 2027, for household networks in 4,786 villages and 323 billion tenge of investment.

Read on Corridor Signal

The facility has a final maturity of October 2031 and an average maturity of 4.55 years. It pays interest at six-month SOFR plus 2.00 per cent a year, and its all-in cost, including the upfront fees paid to the banks, is six-month SOFR plus 2.15 per cent, according to the notice filed on Türkiye's Public Disclosure Platform.

Bank of America acted as coordinator and mandated lead arranger, and ING Bank as facility agent and mandated lead arranger. BNP Paribas Fortis, Citibank, Emirates NBD, First Abu Dhabi Bank, HSBC Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, MUFG Bank, Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank and SMBC Bank were the other mandated lead arrangers, with Mashreqbank as lead arranger and J.P. Morgan as arranger. The notice does not say whether the loan has been drawn, how it splits between 5G, fibre and other uses, whether any of it refinances existing debt, or whether it will be hedged into lira.

Against Turkcell's March facility

The loan matches in size the facility its main rival took earlier in the year. Turkcell drew a USD 1 billion Murabaha syndicated facility on 30 March, with a profit rate of three-month SOFR plus 1.95 per cent a year and an all-in cost of three-month SOFR plus 2.14 per cent including fees, its half-year Form 6-K shows. The two all-in margins differ by one hundredth of a percentage point, but they sit on different reference rates, three-month for Turkcell and six-month for Türk Telekom, so the two costs are not directly comparable.

Turkcell's consolidated debt rose to TL 212.1 billion at 30 June from TL 186.8 billion at the end of 2025, driven primarily by that facility, the filing says. After hedging, 68 per cent of its consolidated debt was in US dollars.

At home, Türk Telekom's subsidiary TTNET approved up to TL 7.5 billion of lease certificates with maturities of up to five years in September, alongside a share buyback of up to TL 2.5 billion at the parent, as Corridor Signal reported.

The balance sheet before the facility

Türk Telekom's net debt stood at 1.00 times EBITDA at the end of June, up from 0.60 times at the end of 2025; it was 0.99 times at the end of March, after payments related to the concession and the 5G licence, its second-quarter results release said. Net debt was TL 122.4 billion, against TL 74.2 billion a year earlier.

The company was short USD 2.4 billion in foreign currency at the end of June, a position that includes USD 2.8 billion of concession and mobile licence obligations; without them it would have been long USD 331 million, the release said. Net financial expense rose 91.6 per cent year on year to TL 19.3 billion in the second quarter, mainly on foreign-exchange losses on those obligations and on higher hedging costs. Corridor Signal set out how the two operators carry their 5G bills in an analysis of their half-year filings.

Spending on the networks the loan is meant to fund was already rising. Capital expenditure excluding solar investments was TL 23.1 billion in the second quarter, up 39.8 per cent from TL 16.5 billion a year earlier, an increase the release attributes largely to 5G and fibre.

Unlevered free cash flow was TL 3.9 billion in the second quarter, against TL 9.4 billion a year earlier, affected by higher capital spending, the release said. For the full year, the company set its capital expenditure intensity at 34 per cent of revenue in August, from a range of 33 to 34 per cent, in a guidance revision that excludes spending on solar investments, the concession extension and licence fees. The same revision narrowed consolidated revenue growth guidance, excluding IFRIC 12, to 8 per cent and raised the company's assumption for year-end inflation to 27 per cent from 22 per cent.

Next document: the third-quarter accounts

Türk Telekom publishes its results for July to September on 4 November, as Corridor Signal reported from its calendar notice. The loan was signed after that quarter closed on 30 September, so those accounts will not include it on the 30 September balance sheet.

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The release also gives a table for the 14 regions it counts, Karakalpakstan, the 12 regions and the city of Tashkent. Developing Telecoms and UzDaily carried the national totals; the regional split below is from the operator's own table, and it shows where the work went.

Upgrades ahead of plan, new sites behind

The 1,566 upgrades are 59 more than planned, or 104 per cent of the target, the release says. The planned number has been exceeded in 12 of the 14 regions and met in full in Navoi Region.

New construction is further behind. The 380 new stations are 88 per cent of the 431 planned, or 51 short on Corridor Signal's arithmetic. The release says the programme targets have been exceeded in Tashkent, Bukhara and Navoi Regions, and met in full in Samarkand and Khorezm Regions.

Figures are for 18 October 2026, from the operator's table of newly commissioned and modernised stations under the 2025 to 2026 programme.

Where the new stations went

Samarkand Region received the most new stations, 62, followed by Tashkent city and Kashkadarya Region with 52 each, Surkhandarya Region with 39 and Bukhara Region with 31. Those five regions took 236 of the 380, or 62 per cent, on Corridor Signal's arithmetic. At the other end, Namangan and Syrdarya regions each got 6, Fergana Region 7 and Andijan Region 9.

The pattern differs from the upgrades. Andijan, Fergana and Namangan regions had 381 upgrades between them, 24 per cent of the national total, but only 22 new stations, 6 per cent of the total. Tashkent city and Tashkent Region together had 383 upgrades, 24 per cent, and 73 new stations. The release says the largest volume of frequency additions, 442 completed in all, was recorded in Kashkadarya, Samarkand, Bukhara and Surkhandarya regions.

Bukhara is also where Uztelecom opened a data centre on 22 September, as Corridor Signal reported.

375 stations support 5G, half of them in Tashkent city

Of the 375 base stations that support 5G, Tashkent city has 189, Samarkand Region 84, Tashkent Region 19, Andijan Region 13, Fergana and Namangan regions 12 each and Kashkadarya Region 11, the release says. That accounts for 340 stations, so the seven regions the release does not list share the other 35, an average of five each on Corridor Signal's arithmetic. Tashkent city alone holds 50 per cent of the 5G stations.

The release says 5G stations are present in all 14 regions and adds that their presence "does not mean that 5G is available at every location within it", because coverage depends on the distance to the station and on the device.

The totals sit alongside the minister's reply to parliament on 20 October, which put fibre at 98.1 per cent of settlements and mobile coverage on 95.5 per cent of international highways, as Corridor Signal reported. The operator's figures are its own account of progress and are not independently audited; the next test is whether the 51-station gap on new sites closes before the programme ends.

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The ministry also said the city was first in the country to close every coverage gap, or "white spot", identified in 2024. Its statement describes fibre as the most advanced and reliable data transmission technology in use today. It gives no subscriber count for the copper switch-off and no date for the final disconnections.

The statement came from a meeting in Turkestan region on the national "Accessible Internet" project, attended by ministry officials and operators. The region has 801 settlements, made up of seven cities and 794 villages.

Backbone fibre at 408 of 794 villages

The ministry said backbone fibre-optic lines now reach 408 of the region's villages. It expects that number to rise to 570 by the end of 2026 and to 778 by 2027. Set against the 794 villages the ministry lists, the 2027 figure would leave 16 villages without a backbone connection, and the ministry's statement does not say how they would be served.

On those figures, backbone fibre covers about 51 per cent of the region's villages today, would reach about 72 per cent by the end of this year and about 98 per cent in 2027. The ministry did not publish that arithmetic itself, and it does not say how many households in each village can use the lines. A backbone connection brings fibre to a village, not necessarily to each home.

The step from 408 to 570 means 162 more villages in roughly two months, on the ministry's timetable. The step to 778 in 2027 adds another 208. The statement gives no breakdown by operator or by month.

A public-sector fibre build with Kazakhtelecom

A separate build under an investment agreement with Kazakhtelecom is laying fibre to public and budget-funded organisations. The ministry said the project will connect 649 such organisations at 372 points over 2,638.1 km of planned lines, of which 852.2 km, or 32 per cent, has been laid. Work covers 12 districts of the region.

The ministry listed 267 schools, 257 medical institutions and rural first-aid posts, and 80 district administrations among the sites, along with police, border, customs and emergency service facilities. A report by Baq.kz on the same meeting repeated these figures.

Kazakhtelecom has been moving copper subscribers in the region to fibre under its SWAP network modernisation programme. In August, KazNews reported that the company would transfer 13,105 subscribers in Turkestan region from copper to fibre over two years, and that technicians had already switched the first 827 customers. The report cited the town of Lenger in Tolebi district, where 416 fibre ports had been built, 52 subscribers were connected and 234 families in all were to be switched to fibre.

Mobile networks and the remaining gaps

On mobile, the ministry said 4G is available in 702 settlements and is planned to reach 772 by 2030. The older 3G standard still runs in 39 villages and is due to be switched off completely by 2028. A total of 138 5G base stations have been installed in the region.

Of 95 problem locations identified earlier in the region, 77 (81 per cent) have been resolved, and work is under way at the other 18 (19 per cent). Turkestan city is therefore ahead of the region as a whole on coverage gaps, a point the Baq.kz report also made.

Roads and border crossings come later. Under an agreement with Transtelecom, survey work and coordinates for five antenna-mast structures along key highways are complete, with construction planned for 2027. Seven border crossing points, named in the statement as B. Konysbayev, Atameken, Tselinny, Kaplanbek, Syrdariya, Kazygurt and Zhibek Zholy, are to get quality mobile and internet service by 2027, once masts and power supply are in place. Four tourist sites, Sauran, the Ukasha Ata shrine, the Tuttybulak waterfall and the Akmeshit cave, are to be connected by 2028.

The Turkestan figures sit within a national programme with a large gap to close this year. In early October the government reported that 370 of 1,600 planned villages had been connected nationwide by early October. The region is also the largest site of the World Bank-funded rural broadband project, which pays operators to bring fibre to homes, a separate effort that the ministry covered the same day in its own statement. An earlier piece explained the loan and its matching grants.

The copper statement is a milestone for one city rather than a measure of the region. The ministry gives a clear end state for backbone fibre, 778 of 794 villages by 2027, and it names 2028 as the year 3G ends. Readers tracking delivery have three numbers to check against the next ministry update: 570 villages by the end of 2026, 852.2 km of public-sector fibre laid out of 2,638.1 km, and the 18 mobile locations still open.

Read on Corridor Signal

Ministry officials and a World Bank delegation toured the region to see construction under the project "Accelerated Digitalisation for an Inclusive Economy of Kazakhstan", which the Bank's papers call the Digital Acceleration for an Inclusive Economy project, or DARE. The ministry describes it as a scheme to subsidise high-speed internet connections to rural households, paid for from a government loan from the Bank.

From 212 villages to five by December

The release says the scheme will cover 212 villages in Turkestan region, home to 387,000 people, or about 68,000 households. Tenders have been announced for 26 of them and contracts concluded for 17. By the end of 2026 the ministry expects construction and installation to be fully finished in the first 5 villages, with subsidies paid to the operators that built them.

On those figures, tenders cover 12.3 per cent of the region's 212 villages, signed contracts 8.0 per cent and planned completions 2.4 per cent, by Corridor Signal's calculation. The release does not name the operators, the villages or the contract values, and it does not say how much of the 17-village group is expected to finish in 2027.

The release describes the 17 as at the design and survey stage. Its wording leaves open whether the five villages due for completion are among the 17 contracted. A related ministry release from the same day covers the region's mobile coverage and says Turkestan city has become the first in Kazakhstan to retire ADSL copper lines entirely.

Turkestan's share of the national scheme

Damir Seisembekov, chairman of the ministry's Telecommunications Committee, called the region the "absolute leader" by scale. In the Russian text, in Corridor Signal's translation, he said that of more than 1,100 villages covered nationwide, over 200 are in Turkestan, where fibre is brought to the household. He linked the priority to the region's high birth rate and number of children per family.

The release's background note puts the national programme at 1,123 villages in 2026 and 2027, with more than 445,000 households, or about 2.3 million people, gaining access. It plans about 3,800 km of new optical networks and coverage of at least 80 per cent of households in the villages included. Turkestan's 212 villages are 18.9 per cent of the 1,123, and its 387,000 people are 16.8 per cent of the 2.3 million, by Corridor Signal's calculation.

The village count for the region has moved. When the ministry opened the first grant competition in February, the business outlet Digital Business reported, citing the ministry, that Turkestan would have 195 villages of the 1,123, the largest regional share across 17 regions. The October release says 212 and does not explain the difference of 17. The Bank's project appraisal document, dated February 2024, had named Turkestan as one of four priority regions with 1,214 villages between them, so the scheme's geography has widened since design.

How the money moves

The subsidy is paid after the work, not before. Digital Business reported in February that operators build with their own funds and the state then compensates up to 50 per cent of confirmed capital costs through matching grants, with the networks staying on the operators' balance sheets. The ministry's October release says subsidies will be paid for the first five villages by year-end, which would be the first visible output of the scheme.

The Bank's latest implementation status report, dated 29 June 2026, shows how early the loan was. It records US$0.27 million disbursed of US$80.95 million, or 0.33 per cent, says the first three rounds of matching grants had been launched and advanced through initial selection and award stages, and leaves the progress and implementation ratings at moderately satisfactory. All the report's outcome indicators were still at baseline, including 1.1 million people newly using broadband, a target for June 2028. Our explainer of 27 October sets out the grant rules and the loan's history.

The ministry's release gives no disbursement total. The Bank's next status report, which is due around December on its six-monthly rhythm, should show whether payments have started and whether the Bank moves the ratings.

Three numbers decide whether Turkestan meets the year-end promise: how many of the 26 tendered villages reach contract, whether the five completions are verified by the project unit and paid, and whether the 212-village total holds. The national picture is a wider test. The government's summary of an early October session reported 370 villages connected in 2026 against a plan of 1,600, a gap Corridor Signal set out in an earlier report. The two counts are not the same measure, and the papers reviewed do not say how far they overlap.

For the Bank, five finished villages with subsidies paid would put actual disbursement against the 0.33 per cent reported in June.

Read on Corridor Signal

Kazakhtelecom holds 102,000,000 of Kcell's 200,000,000 authorised common shares, all of which are outstanding. KC Holding Ltd holds 29,745,215. Together that is 131,745,215 shares, or 65.87 per cent, leaving 68,254,785 shares, or 34.13 per cent, with holders below the 10 per cent reporting line. KASE lists no other holder above it. The disclosure for 1 July, published on 20 July, gives the same two names and the same share counts.

The filing is the register that our 25 October piece named as the next point at which a change in these holdings would show. It shows none among the two largest holders. It does not show how the remaining 34.13 per cent divides, or how much of it trades, because it lists only holders of 10 per cent or more.

The date matters for the merger vote. Kcell's board called an extraordinary meeting for 17 November to vote on merging KazNet Media JSC into Kcell, and set the register at 00:00 Almaty time on 19 October as the record date for who may attend and vote. The 1 October snapshot is 18 days earlier, so it does not itself establish who holds the votes. A register as of 19 October is not part of what KASE has published so far.

A second notice from Kcell, also dated 16 October, adds a detail the first did not. It convenes a joint general meeting of Kcell and KazNet Media shareholders on 17 November at 11:30 Almaty time, half an hour after the Kcell meeting is due to start, with the same 18 November fallback. Its agenda has three items: approving the agenda, setting up a counting commission, and the merger itself. Like the first notice, it gives no terms, no exchange ratio and no voting threshold.

Telecompaper reported on 22 October that KazNet Media has been part of Kcell's corporate structure since 2016 and specialises in software code development and testing, in its report on the proposed merger. Kcell's notices do not describe the business.

Kazakhtelecom, the 51.00 per cent holder, is the controlling shareholder whose support Moody's cited in its Baa3 rating of Kcell, as the operator summarised it. Kcell's notices say agenda materials will be available for review at least ten days before the meeting, which for 17 November means by 7 November. Those papers are the next place where terms, and any related holdings, could appear.

Read on Corridor Signal

The release gives values at current prices and growth rates at comparable prices, and says so in its notes. On the committee's values alone the sector grew by UZS 15,883.4 billion, or 25.7 per cent; the gap to 21.4 per cent is the price adjustment, and the release does not publish the index it used. Total market services reached UZS 1,003,197.6 billion, up 16.7 per cent, so communication and information services were 7.7 per cent of the total.

Among the categories the release lists, only financial services (22.0 per cent) and the small architecture, engineering and testing group (24.2 per cent) grew faster. The sector added 1.6 percentage points to the 16.7 per cent growth in market services, behind trade (4.0), financial services (3.4), transport (2.8) and accommodation and food (2.1).

Programming took two thirds of the increase

The committee splits the sector by type. Computer programming services were UZS 37,559.2 billion, or 48.4 per cent. Telecommunication services followed with 27.5 per cent, information services with 15.8 per cent, and publishing and other services with 6.1 and 2.2 per cent. The release's chart combines the last two into "other services".

Values are the release's; changes and the 2026 shares of the last row are calculated from them in current prices, so they sit above the committee's comparable-price rate. Programming added UZS 10,345.2 billion, 65 per cent of the sector's increase, while telecommunication added UZS 3,233.1 billion, 20 per cent. The release says the high share of programming "indicates that this direction plays an important role in the development of digital services". It names no companies and does not separate mobile, fixed or data-centre revenue within telecommunication.

The mix has been moving for months. The committee's release of 30 June, covering January to May, put the sector at UZS 39,024.8 billion, with programming at 46.1 per cent and telecommunication at 29.7 per cent. By September programming had gained 2.3 points of share and telecommunication had lost 2.2. In that release the category was called information and communication services, and in January to May programming grew 40.4 per cent and telecommunication 17.1 per cent in current prices, the same pattern as nine months. These shares are of services revenue; they are not the value-added shares in our earlier piece on ICT output, where telecoms stood at 28.9 per cent.

Reconciling the eight-month figure

Our report of 27 October used the committee's release of 12 October, which put the sector at UZS 71.4 trillion in January to August, up 21.2 per cent. On the evidence available, the two releases measure the same series. The committee's eight-month table of market services, as reported by UzDaily, lists communication and information technology services at UZS 71.4 trillion within a services total of UZS 908.6 trillion, and the nine-month table uses the same category inside the same total.

What the releases do not let a reader do is subtract. The eight-month release gave no type split and did not state the price basis of its growth rate, so the nine-month composition cannot be checked against it. Subtracting 71.4 from 77.6 implies about UZS 6.2 trillion for September alone, against an average of 8.9 trillion a month over the first eight months, or about 70 per cent of that pace. The same arithmetic on all market services gives UZS 94.6 trillion for September against a monthly average of 113.6 trillion, or 83 per cent.

The nine-month release calls its data preliminary and says its 2025 comparatives were revised for a new method of counting trade services. Neither release says whether September was a weak month or whether earlier months were revised. Readers should treat UZS 6.2 trillion as the output of the arithmetic, not as a published September figure, and use the cumulative totals. The January to September figures predate the mobile tariff rises that the competition committee began to review in October, so they show nothing of their effect.

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On 27 October the shares cost an average of TL 90.50, for a total of TL 108,273,261, equal to 0.054 per cent of capital, the Form 6-K for that day shows. The filing for 28 October gives 20,110 shares at an average of TL 91.10, for TL 1,832,021, or 0.0009 per cent of capital. Both are Group B shares, and both filings repeat the stated aim of protecting stakeholders' interests and supporting healthy price formation.

The table in the second filing lists every purchase under the programme so far: 2,093,944 shares on 12 November 2025, 3,201,696 on 23 October, and the two new tranches. That makes 6,512,127 shares for about TL 588.0 million, or 6.9 per cent of the TL 8.5 billion fund the programme allows, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The shares equal about 0.30 per cent of Turkcell's TL 2.2 billion issued capital, against the 10 per cent ceiling set in the programme the board put to shareholders in March 2025. The table shows no purchase on 26 October.

The pace has changed. Our 29 October piece reported that the 23 October tranche was the first in more than 11 months. Three sessions in the four trading days from 23 October have now added 4,418,183 shares, about twice the November 2025 purchase. The average price has risen from TL 86.75 on 23 October to TL 91.10 on 28 October.

The filings give no plan for further purchases and no reason for the timing. Turkcell's main domestic rival has also been buying since September, under the TL 2.5 billion programme Türk Telekom started in September. Turkcell reports its third-quarter results on 9 November after Borsa Istanbul trading hours, according to its calendar announcement; the October purchases fall in the fourth quarter.

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The ministry described the flight in a release the same day. It calls SES an international satellite communications provider and says the airline's own technicians install the equipment at its technical base. All passengers get free access during a promotional period to 31 January 2027. From 1 February 2027 free Wi-Fi is limited to business class and to Gold and Diamond members of the Nomad Club programme; members at every level can use messaging apps free, and other passengers can buy paid packages. Fitting of the A321LR fleet continues in stages through 2027.

The release says the ministry prepared changes to legislation and to the requirements for non-geostationary satellite systems, with special conditions for air and water transport, and agreed compliance with Kazakh law, security requirements included, with the operators. It does not give the connection speed, the price of the packages, the number of aircraft to be fitted or which SES satellite network carries the service.

The flight delivers one of two transport promises made in January, when the government said internet access would appear on Kazakhstan Temir Zholy trains and Air Astana aircraft, in its summary of a government session. For the railway, the minister told deputies in May that 27 passenger routes would get internet through OneWeb and Starlink by the end of 2026, Kapital.kz reported.

The service adds SES to the satellite operators active in Kazakhstan, after Starlink and OneWeb moved to commercial licences in Kazakhstan on 2 October. Our explainer on the legal terms for low-orbit operators covers Starlink's 2025 compliance agreement and its plan to serve neighbours through Kazakh gateways, and notes that the security conditions themselves are unpublished. The release does not name the orbit of the SES service, and does not say whether the aviation service runs under the same rules or a separate permission.

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The cancelled shares equal 1,078,049 American depositary shares. The release describes the cancellation as pursuant to the buyback VEON announced on 23 September, which is to retire 3.9 per cent of its outstanding shares, or 72.5 million shares and their equivalent in depositary shares. The shares now cancelled are 37.2 per cent of that number, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The October release does not say what VEON paid for them, how many came from the open market and how many from LetterOne, the shareholder that agreed to sell into the programme, or how many shares remain outstanding.

What the September programme set out

VEON put the value of the programme at about $200 million, based on a closing price of $69.37 per depositary share on 22 September, and said the final amount would vary with the prices paid, in the September release. Each depositary share represents 25 common shares. Every share acquired is to be cancelled.

The company said $200 million equalled 27.5 per cent of its equity free cash flow after leases and licences for the twelve months to 30 June 2026, and implied a yield of 5.5 per cent on the average closing price over the twelve months to 22 September. Both ratios use the $200 million figure, which was itself set at the 22 September reference price rather than at the prices eventually paid.

The programme raised the minimum annual buyback of $100 million that VEON set in May 2025, and came on top of a separate $100 million programme announced in November 2025, which the company said was complete. Since August 2024, VEON said, it had repurchased 4.46 million depositary shares, or 6.0 per cent of those outstanding, for $227.6 million in total.

"Returning cash to shareholders is a core priority for VEON," Kaan Terzioglu, VEON's group chief executive, said in the September release. Shares and depositary shares held by the company itself represented about 7.9 per cent of its outstanding shares after an issuance in March 2024 and later transfers, the release said.

LetterOne's share of the sales

The buyback combines open-market purchases of depositary shares with direct purchases from LetterOne, which agreed to sell up to 32,957,830 shares to VEON in proportion to its holding, at prices and in volumes set by reference to the open-market purchases, the September release said. LetterOne held 45.46 per cent of VEON on a base of 1,849,190,667 common shares in its own filing, as Corridor Signal reported when a second investor, Shah Capital, moved its 6.72 per cent stake to a passive filing on 16 October.

On LetterOne's base, the shares cancelled on 20 October come to 1.46 per cent, which matches the "approximately 1.5 per cent" in the release, on Backhaul's arithmetic. If LetterOne sold in proportion to its holding, its part of the cancelled shares would be about 12.3 million, but the release gives no split, and the number of shares VEON has bought but not yet cancelled is not disclosed.

At the September reference price, the 1,078,049 depositary shares cancelled would have cost about $74.8 million, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The actual cost depends on the prices paid between 23 September and 20 October, which VEON has not published.

The corridor businesses behind the cash

VEON describes itself as serving more than 150 million connectivity customers and more than 228 million digital customers in five countries. Two of those countries are on the corridor. In Kazakhstan, Beeline Kazakhstan's EBITDA fell 17.5 per cent in tenge in the second quarter as revenue rose 3.8 per cent, as Corridor Signal reported.

In Uzbekistan, the group agreed on 19 October to buy the mobile operator Perfectum for about $207 million including debt, and the Competition Committee cleared the deal on conditions that include a 12-month freeze on 5G fixed wireless tariffs for existing customers. VEON said it expected to complete the purchase by the end of October.

On the day the Perfectum deal was announced, Uzbekistan's digital technologies minister, Sherzod Shermatov, met Mr Terzioglu in Samarkand on the sidelines of the C5+1 summit, Trend reported, citing the ministry. The two discussed mobile coverage, network modernisation and digital services, the report said, and it noted that VEON says it has invested more than $1.6 billion in the country's telecom sector since entering in 2006. No new figure or commitment was attached to the meeting.

VEON's third-quarter results are due on 6 November, a company announcement says, and would be the first set of accounts to show the cost of the shares bought since 23 September. Until then the October release leaves three numbers unstated: the price paid, the split between open-market and LetterOne purchases, and the shares still to be bought before the 72.5 million target is reached. If the cancelled shares are the only ones acquired so far, that balance is 45.5 million, on Backhaul's arithmetic.

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Nearly six months on, the release names no recipient country, no project and no first tranche. For corridor operators and ministries, what it changes is the size of a lender's stated appetite and the targets the lender has set itself, including a cut of about 40 per cent in connectivity costs in remote and landlocked areas.

What the US$20 billion is for

ADB expects to finance US$15 billion from its own resources and raise US$5 billion through cofinancing, the release says. The money is to go to terrestrial and subsea fibre networks, satellite links and regional data centres, with policy and regulatory support, including on cybersecurity risk management, and skills programmes for digital and AI readiness.

The targets for 2035 are first-time broadband for 200 million people and faster, more reliable connectivity for another 450 million. The release also promises 4 million jobs and the cost cut of about 40 per cent in remote and landlocked areas, without saying how the cut will be measured or against which baseline.

A Center for AI Innovation and Development in Seoul, backed by a US$20 million contribution from the Republic of Korea, is to train about 3 million people in digital and AI skills by 2035. "Energy and digital access will define the region's future," Masato Kanda, ADB's president, said in the release.

Where the corridor fits

The release names only Uzbekistan, as the place of issue, and Korea, as a funder. Central Asia enters through the power side: the US$50 billion Pan-Asia Power Grid Initiative builds on the CAREC Energy Strategy 2030 among other programmes, and targets about 20 GW of renewable energy integrated across borders and 22,000 circuit-kilometres of transmission lines by 2035. ADB expects to finance about half of that from its own resources, with up to US$10 million of technical assistance for regulatory alignment, common technical standards and feasibility studies.

For the digital side, the nearest ADB document is the GSMA study the bank published on 13 October, which placed Türkiye and Kazakhstan among the leaders of 34 developing Asian markets on the Mobile Connectivity Index and Tajikistan second from bottom, and urged cheaper spectrum and service-neutral licences, as Corridor Signal reported. The May release gives no ranking of its own.

Tajikistan has already set out what it wants from such a programme. Its Communication Service presented a draft Dushanbe Call to Action on resilient connectivity for landlocked developing countries at the ITU's regional forum on 29 and 30 September, listing lower-cost digital transit, financing for bankable projects and green data centres among six areas, as Corridor Signal reported. The ITU's draft outcome report put Partner2Connect pledges for the CIS region at US$2.29 billion, with progress reported on 28 per cent of them.

What an operator can and cannot take from it

An operator or a ministry can take three things from the release. First, the sectors: fibre, satellite and regional data centres are named, so a cross-border backbone or a landing station fits the stated scope where a national mobile network does not. Second, the ratio: three dollars of ADB money for every dollar of cofinancing on the digital side, a higher own-resource share than the roughly half the bank plans for the power grids. Third, the measure: the bank has set itself targets for first-time users and for the cost of connectivity in remote and landlocked areas, so a project that can show either has a case.

What they cannot take is a pipeline. The release gives no allocation by country or subregion, no application route and no date for a first project. The EBRD, whose telecom strategy for 2025 to 2029 says it will seek enhanced collaboration with ADB, particularly in Central Asia and the Caucasus, had by September disclosed one corridor backbone loan of its own, for Tajikistan, with a board date of 16 December, as Corridor Signal reported. Corridor Signal found no ADB project disclosed under the Digital Highway name by 26 October.

Dates to watch: 9 to 27 November 2026, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Doha, where four corridor states are candidates for two Radio Regulations Board seats; and 16 December 2026, the EBRD board date for Tajikistan Rural Broadband.

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The first phase ran on a mobile private network at the Istanbul Expo Center and the second at Turkcell's Küçükyalı Plaza, according to the statement. Turkcell's partner was Tiami Networks, whose PolyEdge solution was used to deploy the private 5G networks, Developing Telecoms reported. The use cases the operator listed include crowd management, indoor location, facility security, smart cities, autonomous systems and disaster management.

Vehbi Çağrı Güngör, Turkcell's deputy general manager for network technologies, said the operator could detect entries to and exits from buildings in real time under field conditions, according to the statement, and presented the absence of cameras as a privacy benefit, according to the report. Neither the statement nor the report says how accuracy was measured, how many people were in the test areas or when, if ever, the function might be offered commercially.

Where ISAC sits in the 6G timetable

ISAC is one of six usage scenarios in the ITU's framework for IMT-2030, the formal name for 6G, set out in Recommendation ITU-R M.2160, which the Radiocommunication Assembly approved in November 2023, according to the ITU's IMT-2030 page. The others are immersive communication, hyper reliable and low latency communication, massive communication, ubiquitous connectivity, and artificial intelligence and communication.

The standards work is still at the stage of requirements. The ITU invites proposals for candidate radio technologies between February 2027 and February 2029, and draft reports on technical performance requirements and on evaluation guidelines go to its Study Group 5 for approval in December 2026, the page says. A field test now is therefore a test of a capability, not of a 6G standard, which does not yet exist.

The Samsung memorandum

Two days later, on 23 October, Turkcell and Samsung signed a memorandum at Samsung's headquarters in South Korea to make 650,000 5G-compatible Samsung smartphones available to Turkcell customers by the end of 2027, at least 200,000 of them in the premium segment, Habertürk reported. The memorandum covers all of Samsung's 5G models, and a trade-in scheme aimed at customers still using 4.5G phones runs from November 2026 through 2027.

The 650,000 figure is not new. When the two companies signed at the Mobile World Congress in March, the deal itself covered 150,000 phones, 100,000 locally made Galaxy A models and 50,000 Galaxy S models, within a stated vision of 650,000 Samsung 5G devices, Türkiye Gazetesi reported. Turkcell's general manager, Ali Taha Koç, said then that about 30 per cent of phones in Türkiye were 5G-compatible. The October memorandum attaches a date and a premium floor to the target; neither report says how many of the first 150,000 have been sold.

Handsets are the gap the subscriber totals hide. Of 44.5 million 5G subscribers BTK counted at the end of the second quarter, 26.1 million were able to use the service, and the regulator gave device or SIM incompatibility as the reason, as Corridor Signal reported. The count has since passed 45 million, BTK's president said in October, and Turkcell's licence coverage duties start with villages by 2028, under the authorisation terms.

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The group as a whole grew faster: revenue rose 17.0 per cent to $1,271 million and EBITDA 6.2 per cent to $552 million, and VEON raised its 2026 revenue growth outlook to 15 to 18 per cent, according to its results release.

Uzbekistan moved the other way on profit. Revenue rose 5.3 per cent in local currency to UZS 1,009 billion and EBITDA 2.3 per cent to UZS 372 billion, or $84 million and $31 million, with a margin the presentation gives as 36.8 per cent.

The first half, from the filing

The six-month segment table in VEON's interim report on Form 6-K gives the same direction over a longer period, in US dollars:

Kazakh revenue rose 12.6 per cent in dollars and adjusted EBITDA fell 7.5 per cent, or 12.3 per cent in local currency, the filing says; the rounded figures in the table give 7.7 per cent. The margins in the last row are Corridor Signal's division of EBITDA by revenue; VEON does not print them for the half. On that arithmetic the Kazakh margin fell by nine percentage points in a year, while Uzbekistan's slipped by about one and a half.

What VEON says caused it

The filing attributes the Kazakh decline in local currency mainly to higher service costs, commercial costs, personnel costs and marketing spend, and at group level cites "weaker gross margin and higher personnel costs in Kazakhstan". It says the fall in local-currency ARPU in Kazakhstan was driven mainly by lower mobile service revenue usage. The presentation's Kazakhstan slide speaks of macroeconomic and competitive headwinds in its heading and gives no further explanation.

In Uzbekistan the filing credits repricing, higher digital financial services revenue and higher device sales for revenue growth, partly offset at EBITDA level by personnel and service costs. It links the change in its customer numbers there to "increased competition in the market and focus on high-value customer retention".

Digital share and 4G

Digital revenue was 20.0 per cent of the Kazakh total in the quarter, KZT 21.5 billion, up 26.8 per cent, and 15.3 per cent of the Uzbek total, UZS 155 billion, up 21.0 per cent, the presentation shows. It counts 8.7 million three-month active 4G users in Kazakhstan, a penetration of 74.7 per cent, and 5.6 million in Uzbekistan, or 72.7 per cent. Capital expenditure over the last twelve months was 21.0 and 20.7 per cent of revenue. The presentation does not give total mobile subscribers for either country.

What the third quarter adds

VEON will report results for the quarter to 30 September on 6 November and hold a Capital Markets Day on 16 November, according to its announcement. The quarter includes the Kazakh launch of Starlink's satellite-to-mobile service on 29 September, which Corridor Signal reported, but not the purchase of Perfectum in Uzbekistan, which was cleared with conditions after the quarter ended. Beeline's licences in both countries list no 5G, according to VEON's annual report in the documents reviewed.

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The Group B shares bought on 23 October have a nominal value of TL 3,201,696, equal to 0.146 per cent of the company's capital, the filing says. It gives the stated aim as "protecting the interests of our stakeholders and supporting healthy price formation in the market while maintaining the fair value of our shares". The table in the filing lists 2,093,944 shares, in nominal terms, as previously bought back within the programme, which confirms that no purchases were made between the two dates.

The earlier purchase

On 12 November 2025 Turkcell bought 2,093,944 shares at an average of TL 95.58, for TL 200,141,178, or 0.095 per cent of capital, according to its announcement of that day. The October purchase was made at a price 9.2 per cent lower in nominal lira terms, and was about 1.5 times larger by number of shares, on Backhaul's arithmetic.

Together, the two purchases come to 5,295,640 shares and TL 477,872,534. That is 5.6 per cent of the TL 8.5 billion the programme allows and 2.4 per cent of the maximum number of shares it permits, leaving about TL 8.02 billion of the fund unused, on Backhaul's arithmetic. The shares bought so far equal about 0.24 per cent of Turkcell's issued capital.

What the programme allows

The board resolved on 25 March 2025 to put the programme to the annual general assembly, and the text of the programme is attached to that announcement. It allows Turkcell to buy back shares up to 10 per cent of its issued capital of TL 2,200,000,000, within a fund of up to TL 8,500,000,000 drawn from the company's own resources and operating cash flow. The minimum purchase price is TL 1 a share, and the maximum is linked to book value per share in the latest consolidated accounts published on the Public Disclosure Platform.

The programme names two purposes: to protect investors from domestic economic fluctuations or adverse effects of the global economy, and to buy shares for employee share ownership plans. It runs for up to three years from the general assembly's approval. The board may decide not to start purchases or to suspend the programme at any time, depending on market conditions or the company's financial position. Bought-back shares may be held indefinitely, resold on the exchange or cancelled through a capital reduction.

The general assembly held on 15 May 2025 approved the programme, according to Turkcell's report of the meeting's results, so the authority runs until May 2028 at the latest. When it was proposed, the TL 8.5 billion fund equalled 2 per cent of total assets at 31 December 2024, and the company said it did not expect a material effect on its financial position.

The programme document also records an older stock of treasury shares: 21,463,501 shares bought for TL 563,834,214 under decisions dating from July 2016, equal to 0.98 per cent of issued capital in March 2025. In March 2025 the programme document said those shares were held by the company and could be used for employee share ownership plans. The filings do not say whether they, or the two recent tranches, are still held, or whether any will be cancelled.

The same week

The purchase came a day after Turkcell disclosed that it and its research and development subsidiary had paid TL 16.51 billion in cash for two Istanbul Financial Center buildings bought from a unit of the Türkiye Wealth Fund, its controlling shareholder. The 23 October buyback was equivalent to about 1.7 per cent of that price, on Backhaul's arithmetic.

Turkcell's main domestic rival is also in the market for its own stock. Türk Telekom started a buyback of up to TL 2.5 billion in September and had bought 1,214,000 shares by the end of that month. Turkcell's fund is more than three times larger, though both companies have so far used only a small part of their limits.

Turkcell will publish its results for July to September on 9 November, after Borsa Istanbul trading hours, according to a calendar announcement dated 20 October. Those accounts cover a quarter that ended before the October purchase, which falls in the fourth quarter.

The filing does not say whether further purchases are planned or what prompted the resumption after more than 11 months. By 25 October, Turkcell had filed no further buyback transactions with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Read beside the bank's Telecommunications, Media and Technology Sector Strategy for 2025 to 2029, the approach shows what a corridor borrower now faces: open access and competitive tendering as standards the bank calls non-negotiable, due diligence on suppliers of critical networks, and support that includes green, AI-ready data centres.

Open access as the non-negotiable

The TMT strategy's lessons from 2020 to 2024 state that a "minimum set of standards on open access and competitive tendering must be non-negotiable" to ensure competitive safeguards. The strategy lists public and private lending for rural fibre rollout among its instruments and says the bank will seek opportunities to support the state in delivering national broadband programmes.

Its diagnosis of the sector's regulatory challenges names unbundling, duct access, interconnection fees, number portability and infrastructure sharing as the measures at stake, and counts restrictive spectrum licensing and the absence of independent regulators among the weaknesses, using the ITU's regulatory score as the benchmark. Its policy engagement is to run on four lines: state-owned enterprise governance, competitiveness and sector reform, cybersecurity, and legal and regulatory frameworks.

Tajikistan's project is the corridor's next public broadband loan to reach the bank's board. The loan would be implemented through the national telecommunications operator, which owns the core network, and would fund wholesale open-access infrastructure so that other operators can extend last-mile connectivity, the project summary says, as Corridor Signal reported. The summary does not name the operator and does not publish the access terms.

Suppliers, data centres and what the approach leaves out

The Digital Approach adds a risk-based framework for investments in critical ICT infrastructure, with the scope of due diligence set by the risk assessed at the outset, and says the bank "encourages the diversification of suppliers in its projects wherever possible".

Its support includes investments in "green, AI-ready data centres and cloud platforms", sovereign digital infrastructure and high-performance computing. It cites the International Energy Agency's base case that data centres will use 3 per cent of global electricity in 2030, up from about 1.5 per cent in 2024, and says the bank can promote local and edge computing to reduce reliance on energy-intensive centralised cloud.

The approach sets no lending target. Its indicators are counts: investments by pillar, people with better coverage and connectivity, laws and strategies adopted. It says investments from 2022 to 2024 are projected to have given about 14.5 million people better digital coverage and 3.5 million people connectivity, and that the bank invested in 10 digital infrastructure projects in those three years. The TMT strategy likewise lists fibre penetration and 5G coverage as indicators without baselines or goals.

The corridor pipeline so far

The TMT strategy counts 88 signed projects worth €1.6 billion from 2020 to September 2024, with 94 per cent private-sector investments, and names Telecom Armenia and Aztelekom in Azerbaijan among the bank's financings. In 2025 the EBRD invested almost US$2 billion, or €1.72 billion, in Central Asia and Mongolia across 120 projects, its annual summary of 30 January says. Uzbekistan took €880 million and Kazakhstan €378 million, followed by Mongolia with €188 million, the Kyrgyz Republic with €183 million and Tajikistan with €88 million; the summary names no digital, telecom or data-centre project.

The Telecom Armenia deal shows one structure the bank has used in the Caucasus. The EBRD invested US$13.5 million in a US$75 million sustainability-linked bond issued by Telecom Armenia on the Armenian Stock Exchange, to refinance debt and fund network capital expenditure, with transition impact scored on financial resilience and green targets, its project summary says. The project was approved on 4 December 2024.

What the documents set out for a borrower is less money than terms. The strategy's instruments run from capital-markets structures such as the Armenian bond to sovereign lending for rural fibre; its lessons call open access and competitive tendering non-negotiable; the approach says supplier diversification is encouraged wherever possible. The World Bank's matching grants in Kazakhstan show the other route a state can take, paying private providers to build, as Corridor Signal explained.

For a regulator, the strategy's list of regulatory challenges is where the bank's policy engagement starts, and the strategy says that dialogue and technical assistance are focused on areas with identifiable projects the EBRD can finance or that are likely to generate systemic impact.

Dates to watch: 16 December 2026, the EBRD board date for the Tajikistan Rural Broadband loan; the end of 2029, when the TMT strategy period closes; and the bank's annual Impact Report, which the approach says will carry a selection of its digital indicators.

Read on Corridor Signal

What officials have said

Rashad Hasanov, Deputy Minister of Digital Development and Transport, told the second Azerbaijan International Investment Forum in Baku that high-performance computing needs reliable energy, connectivity and physical space, and that the country has all three, Trend reported. He cited surplus generation of about 2 GW and an extensive fibre-optic network, and said the Alat data centre was in the final stage of negotiation after long discussions with numerous hyperscale data centre and cloud companies. He described the intended value chain as turning energy into computing power, then into AI and digital services and high-value exports. Report.az carried the same remarks and noted that no counterparty was named and that it was not stated whether a deal had been signed. Hasanov also said the migration of government information systems to the state cloud, G-Cloud, is continuing and is due to finish by the end of 2027, a step he described as important for the resilience of those systems.

The 2 GW figure echoes an earlier statement. At a meeting on the digital action plan on 11 February, President Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan has at least 2,000 MW of unused generation capacity out of a total of 10,000 MW, which he called a prerequisite for digitalisation, artificial intelligence and data centres. By Corridor Signal's arithmetic that is about 20 per cent of installed capacity. He also said transport and energy corridors should become fibre-optic corridors, and linked the energy demand of data centres to planned green energy cables. The record of that meeting gives no data centre capacity, project list or investment figure.

What documents show

The one project with published financing is state-owned. In December 2024 the European Investment Bank said its lending arm, EIB Global, had signed a EUR 43 million loan to AzInTelecom, its first loan to Azerbaijan's public sector. The money is for digital infrastructure for government services, including two new data centres in the Absheron and Hajigabul regions to provide cloud services, with completion planned for 2027. The release says AzInTelecom's existing data centres are in Baku and Yevlakh, that the operator was the first in the South Caucasus to receive Tier 3 certification, and that the new sites will use green technologies. It does not give their capacity in megawatts.

Interconnection data is thin. The Internet Society's Pulse tracker says no active exchange point is listed for Azerbaijan, and PeeringDB's public API, queried on 17 October, listed seven facilities, all in Baku. Both rely on voluntary records, and absence from them does not prove that an exchange does not operate.

What is not known

• the capacity, owner and operator of the Alat data centre, and whether any hyperscaler has committed;
• whether the roughly 2 GW of surplus generation can be delivered to a specific site, which depends on grid connections the statements do not describe;
• how the public sites in Absheron and Hajigabul relate to the Alat project, if at all;
• whether the action plan the president requested in February has been published with data centre targets.

Until a counterparty or capacity is disclosed, the Azerbaijani case rests on stated advantages rather than a contracted project. The first test is whether the Alat negotiations produce an announcement naming an investor and a megawatt figure.

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Armenia

On 10 February Firebird announced Phase Two of its Armenian project, an additional 41,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs and a $4 billion total, against a $500 million first phase. On 5 June it said the first phase would operate more than 6,000 Blackwell GPUs with a total power capacity of 18 megawatts and that a three-phase plan would scale beyond 100,000 GPUs by the end of 2027. The 15 June release repeated the 100,000 figure.

The 8 August opening release changed the end-2027 target. It said the Armenian roadmap would scale beyond 70,000 GPUs and expand the platform to 300 megawatts. It also said NVIDIA intends to invest in Firebird, following an earlier investment by CoreWeave, and gave no amount for either.

Firebird's website, retrieved on 17 October, lists three data centres. DC-1 in Armenia has 6,144 NVIDIA B200 GPUs across 15 MW. DC-2, described as the Phase 2 expansion in Armenia, has 75,000 VR200 GPUs across 125 MW. DC-3 is a planned site of 75,000 GPUs across 125 MW. The page gives totals of 150,000 GPUs and 300 MW.

Kazakhstan

The government said on 15 June that a planned $10 billion investment would create a cluster powered by 100,000 GPUs, that 300 MW of power capacity was already available and that the project was designed for phased expansion to 1 GW. It said the launch was planned for 2027, and estimated that the project would generate at least $3 billion in annual export revenue. Firebird's own 15 June release described strategic cooperation agreements and gave no dollar, GPU or megawatt figure for Kazakhstan.

On 8 August Firebird said it had secured 125 megawatts of AI infrastructure capacity at Data Center Valley, with approvals from the Kazakh government and export authorisation from the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. On 6 October the government again said a $10 billion package of agreements had been signed with Firebird AI and that Data Center Valley would have a capacity of at least 1 GW. Capacity reported that the first phase is a 125 MW facility valued at around $5 billion. The Times of Central Asia reported that an initial agreement between Kazakhtelecom, KT-Telecom and Firebird AI KZ on 2 October had an undisclosed amount.

Reading the numbers

By Corridor Signal's arithmetic, the three data centres on Firebird's site add up to 265 MW and 156,144 GPUs, against stated totals of 300 MW and 150,000. The page does not say where DC-3 would be. Its 125 MW matches the capacity Firebird says it has secured in Kazakhstan, but the page does not make that link. Phase 1 power is 15 MW on the website and 18 MW in the June release.

Several differences may reflect definitions rather than changes of plan: power available to a site, power allocated to a customer and IT load are different measures, and a GPU target for one country can differ from a platform-wide target. Firebird's global target is also given two ways, 2.5 GW worldwide by 2028 on the website and 2 GW by year end 2028 in the 8 August release. None of the documents reviewed reconciles them.

Two points remain open: which figures are commitments and which are ceilings, and whether the 125 MW DC-3 entry refers to the Kazakh site.

Read on Corridor Signal

The release gives no split between mobile, fixed, internet and other services, names no operators, and does not say whether the index is calculated at comparable prices. The two value columns imply nominal growth of 10.4 per cent, on Link Budget's arithmetic, which suggests the 107.1 per cent index strips out price changes, but the release does not say so. The 2026 figures are marked as preliminary.

Even after the slowdown, the year is running ahead of 2025. The same table gives an index of 106.2 per cent for January to September 2025 against the year before, so the 2026 rate of 107.1 per cent is 0.9 percentage points higher. The January to August comparison was wider: 108.3 per cent in 2026 against 106.2 per cent a year earlier, according to the August release. The gap between the two years has therefore narrowed from 2.1 to 0.9 points in one month, on Link Budget's arithmetic.

What September added

Subtracting the eight-month totals from the nine-month totals, September 2026 accounted for about KGS 3,541.8 million of communication services, against about KGS 3,425.4 million in September 2025, a nominal increase of about 3.4 per cent, on Link Budget's arithmetic. In the first eight months the nominal increase was 11.4 per cent, from KGS 25,623.1 million to KGS 28,541.0 million, the August release shows.

The monthly figure should be read with care. It is derived from two preliminary cumulative totals, and either year's base may be revised; the committee does not publish a separate September series in the release.

Postal and courier services

Postal and courier services grew faster. They reached KGS 2,552.8 million in January to September, against KGS 2,250.8 million a year earlier, with an index of 113.8 per cent, down from 117.0 per cent for January to August, according to the September release. Communication services were about 12.6 times the size of postal and courier services over the nine months, a Link Budget calculation.

The same release shows the wider transport sector moving faster than communications: freight carried by all modes rose to 53,546.5 thousand tonnes, an index of 108.9 per cent, and passengers carried to 494.7 million, an index of 106.5 per cent. Within freight, rail carried 7,762.3 thousand tonnes and road 45,404.5 thousand tonnes, the table shows.

What officials say about the network

The statistics do not cover network build. At the International Telecommunication Union's regional forum in Dushanbe on 29 and 30 September, Altynbek Toktorbaev, chairman of the Kyrgyz Republic's Communications Regulation and Supervision Service, cited the construction of about 3,500 km of fibre-optic lines and connectivity for about 99 per cent of settlements, with satellite solutions used for the remaining gaps in mountainous areas, according to the ITU's draft outcome report. The report does not say over what period the fibre was built or who owns it. A regulator official also described a pilot that brought satellite internet to a high-mountain school in Issyk-Kul region.

None of these documents gives operator revenue or subscriber counts, so the slowdown cannot be traced to a particular company or service from the published data.

The committee's January to October release, which on the timing of the last two would appear in mid-November, is the next document to read.

Read on Corridor Signal

The seabed

Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, the five littoral states, signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea on 12 August 2018. Its Article 14 provides that they "may lay submarine cables and pipelines on the bed of the Caspian Sea", according to a University of Tehran paper that quotes the text, and law firm Norton Rose Fulbright read Article 14(3) as requiring agreement on a pipeline route only between the countries it crosses, in a note published in September 2018. Both documents describe the Convention as not yet in force when they were written. Corridor Signal could not obtain the official text, and the documents reviewed do not establish the Convention's status in 2026.

The Kazakh and Azerbaijani governments did sign an instrument on the day of the launch. During the ceremony on 15 October they exchanged a signed agreement on cooperation to develop the Trans-Caspian International Transport Corridor, according to the Kazakh presidency, which attributes construction of the line to Kazakhtelecom and AzerTelecom and does not say the cable was built under that agreement. The line was paid for from the operators' own funds, and their joint venture is responsible for building and operating it, according to the Kazakh government. None of the launch documents places the joint venture's prices or access terms under a regulator.

On each shore

Kazakhstan. Kazakhtelecom acts as the country's long-distance and international communications operator, with the right to settle accounts with foreign administrations under ITU regulations, according to the regulatory section of its 2024 annual report. It is included in the State Register of Natural Monopolies, and its antimonopoly regulation is overseen by the Committee for State Control in the Sphere of Communications, according to the report's competition section. The report records 2024 changes that brought maximum tariffs for leasing sites for communication equipment, and poles for fibre lines, under state regulation. It does not say whether international transit is among the services whose prices are regulated. Foreign networks have been admitted on stated conditions: Starlink committed in June 2025 to comply fully with national law on information security and communications, according to a ministry statement.

Azerbaijan. President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree establishing a Digital Connectivity information system, owned by the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport and operated by the Information and Communication Technologies Agency, to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency of regulation and oversight in the sector, including telecommunications, Report.az reported on 15 October. The report gives no decree number, and the documents reviewed set out no terms for selling transit capacity.

Georgia. The transit leg west of the Caspian has the most active regulator. The Communications Commission has launched studies of two wholesale markets, "IP transit, i.e. global and local internet connectivity" and dedicated backhaul channels between settlements, as part of a holistic review of competition, according to a ComCom statement of 22 September. The same review found, on preliminary results, that one operator owns about 70 per cent of the potentially usable duct infrastructure, and experts recommended transparency, non-discrimination and stronger tools to regulate access fees. The statement gives no timetable for the transit study.

Türkiye. Where Türkiye has set terms on the corridor's edge, it has published them: the northern Cyprus fibre protocol writes maximum wholesale tariffs into its text, has the local regulator, BTHK, set the caps with regard to inflation and costs, and indexes them to consumer prices every six months, according to the Official Gazette.

What the series leaves open

Across five parts the documents establish a route, two coastal ends, an owner and a design capacity. They do not establish the landing stations, the backhaul west of Sumgayit, the lit capacity, the price or the regulator for the crossing. Three items would close the largest gaps: the Convention's status, ComCom's findings on IP transit, and any published terms from the joint venture. The Corridor Capacity Tracker will record them as they appear.

Read on Corridor Signal

From pilot to legal service

Method: each row comes from a primary document linked in the Source column: two releases of the Government of Kazakhstan (June 2024 in Russian, translated by Corridor Signal, and July 2025 in English), the digital ministry's June 2025 statement on the Starlink agreement as published on the state Otandastar Foundation's site, and VEON's release of 29 September 2026 on its Kazakh subsidiary.

Until mid-2025 Starlink worked only for schools. By June 2024 the ministry had connected 1,485 of 1,883 schools in a pilot using SpaceX's technology, according to the government. The minister, Zhaslan Madiyev, described the change in June 2025: "Until now, Starlink operated in Kazakhstan in pilot mode, providing internet access only to schools. The general public had no official access," according to the ministry statement. Under the agreement, he said, the company "has committed to fully comply with our legislation on information security and communications."

What the documents leave unstated

The published texts describe the outcome rather than the licence. The June 2025 statement says citizens may lawfully buy, operate and register terminals, and that technical and organisational conditions, including service parameters for private users, were still under review. It frames the service around rural schools, health facilities, mobile units and infrastructure sites where fibre is economically or technically hard to build, and says every stage will follow national law, including cybersecurity and safety requirements. It does not say which entity holds the authorisation, where traffic must land, or what the compliance obligations require in practice. The July 2025 statement lists the four constellations as partners without saying whether OneWeb, Shanghai Spacecom or Kuiper hold, or have applied for, permission to sell services.

Retail pricing is visible, though not from the regulator. Starlink lists its Kazakh plans on its own website, with a basic home plan from 23,000 tenge a month with speed limits and unlimited plans from 31,000 tenge, the Times of Central Asia reported in February. Satellite sits alongside a rural connection programme: the government plans to connect 1,600 villages in 2026, and 370 had been connected by early October, according to its 6 October summary. VEON says Beeline Kazakhstan worked with the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and Starlink to bring the service to market, according to its release, but the release does not say which spectrum the service uses or on what terms.

The neighbours

The gateway plan would give Kazakhstan a role beyond its borders. Mr Madiyev said satellite internet delivered through Kazakh ground stations was expected to become available to Tajikistan as early as 2026 and could later extend to Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan, the Times of Central Asia reported, citing Tengrinews. Starlink said on 5 February that its service was available in Tajikistan, the same newspaper reported. Kyrgyzstan appeared on Starlink's service map as available from 23 May, Asia-Plus reported, citing the Fergana news agency. In April, the newspaper said, the Kyrgyz Cabinet had stated that permitting was complete and that SpaceX had met the required conditions and signed agreements with authorised state agencies. Uzbekistan's launch was planned for 2026 but had not happened as of February, according to the Times of Central Asia.

None of these reports establishes whether Tajik or Kyrgyz users are served through gateways in Kazakhstan, and no primary document available to Corridor Signal from those governments sets out the conditions attached to their permits. If traffic for neighbouring markets does run through Kazakh gateways, the conditions Kazakhstan attached to Starlink in 2025 on information security and communications would in practice travel with it, which makes the content of those conditions, still unpublished in the documents reviewed here, a regional rather than a national question.

Read on Corridor Signal

Starlink Georgia was authorised to provide satellite internet services in July 2022 and began serving subscribers in the second half of 2023, according to the statement. Speeds offered to individual customers range from 100 to 150 Mbps, and services for legal entities offer up to 220 Mbps.

What was on the table

ComCom chairman Goga Gulordava and commissioner Ekaterine Imedadze met Dynamite Obinna, SpaceX's international policy lead for Europe and Africa, to discuss the company's "operating priorities and future plans in Georgia", the regulator said. The agenda covered high-speed connectivity, the resilience of critical infrastructure, the development of satellite internet capabilities and the Starlink for Good initiative, which the statement says aims to strengthen connectivity for local communities and schools.

ComCom said the new-generation terminals are expected to contribute to improved internet speeds and service quality. In its description of the service, the regulator notes that SpaceX has launched approximately 13,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit and that Starlink provides connectivity including in areas where internet access is unreliable, limited or unavailable, according to the statement. The commission presents satellite broadband as one strand of its work on network resilience rather than as a substitute for fixed or mobile networks.

The statement does not say which technical standards would be updated, whether a rule change or a new authorisation would be needed for the new terminals, or when a decision might come. Officials from ComCom's competition and market regulation, spectrum and technology, international relations and legal departments attended, according to the release, which suggests the discussion touched on both market and spectrum questions.

On ComCom's own numbers, growth of about 200 subscribers a month implies roughly 2,400 additions over the year to June 2026, meaning close to half of Starlink's base in Georgia was added in that period. The regulator does not give a revenue figure for the company or say how many of the subscribers are businesses.

Huawei and 5G-Advanced

A month later, on 9 October, Mr Gulordava met Zhang Xiugui, president of Huawei Technologies for the Central Asia region. The meeting focused on mobile network development, "the use of radio frequency spectrum in Georgia" and next-generation mobile technologies, according to a ComCom statement. The two sides discussed the capabilities of 5G-Advanced, prospects for 6G and spectrum planning for mobile networks, and Huawei presented its technology vision, the statement says. It does not mention any agreement, band or timetable.

Three days earlier the commission held a working meeting with representatives of the US Embassy in Georgia and Shane Tews, president of Logan Circle Strategies and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, on the role of communications and media regulators in the age of artificial intelligence, according to ComCom. That discussion covered AI governance, coordination between regulators responsible for telecoms, competition, data protection, consumer protection and cybersecurity, and the balance between investment and competition, the statement says.

Taken together, the three statements show the regulator engaging a satellite operator, a Chinese network vendor and US officials within a month. None records a regulatory decision. The SpaceX meeting is the only one that comes with operating data, and the commission has not published a consultation on the terminal standards it discussed.

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Neither account gives a value in manat, a split between mobile, fixed, internet and postal services, or subscriber numbers, and neither says whether the growth is measured at current or constant prices. The transport and communications complex as a whole grew 14.7 per cent in the nine months, the 2 October account says, with the Ministry of Railway Transport at 7.4 per cent, the Ministry of Motor Transport at 15.8 per cent and the national airline service at 21.8 per cent. Within GDP growth of 6.3 per cent, the transport and communications sector grew 10.4 per cent.

5G in Awaza

Trend reported on 15 October, citing the press service of the government, that Altyn Asyr, a Turkmen mobile operator, had launched 5G services in the Awaza National Tourist Zone ahead of high-level international events held there from 7 to 9 October. The report gives no speeds, number of sites, frequency band or equipment supplier. Backhaul has not found the government statement on the official government or news agency sites.

Altyn Asyr announced an international tender in March for 4G and 5G base stations and the modernisation of its network in several regions, Trend reported on 26 March. The report did not name the regions or give quantities, and no award has been published.

Quality of service

At the 1 August meeting, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov instructed the deputy chairman of the cabinet who reported on transport and communications to hold the issue of "improvement of the quality of telecommunication service rendered to the population in the centre of attention", the State News Agency's account says.

The next document is the cabinet's account of full-year results, which would show whether the ministry held its growth rate through December.

Read on Corridor Signal

The contrast makes Türkiye the clearest case in the corridor of a market where the licensing question for LEO broadband is still open, and where the incumbent's own filing explains what is at stake.

The authorisation record

Method: the Turkish rows come from Turkcell's Form 20-F for 2025, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 17 April 2026, in its risk factors, its description of Turkish telecoms regulation and its operating data. The Kazakh rows come from the digital ministry's June 2025 statement, published on the state Otandastar Foundation's site, and from VEON's release of 29 September 2026. No Turkish regulator document on LEO services was available to Corridor Signal.

How a licence would work in Türkiye

Under the Electronic Communications Law, as summarised in the filing, the regulator, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA), authorises services either by notification, where no scarce resource is allocated, or by granting usage rights where frequencies or satellite positions must be assigned. Usage rights can run for up to 25 years. Where only a limited number of operators can use a resource, the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure sets the criteria, including the authorisation policy for services that need a national satellite position and frequency band, the start date, the duration and the number of operators, while the ICTA grants the authorisation.

That structure matters because a LEO broadband service needs both spectrum rights and, in practice, ground infrastructure. Turkcell's wording, "subject to legislative approval", suggests that its reading is that the existing rules would need changing, not simply an application to the regulator. The filing does not say what change it expects or when.

Satellite services as such are not new in Türkiye. Turkcell Superonline has been authorised as a satellite communication service provider since 24 March 2009, and Turkcell's tower company, Global Tower, holds a satellite service licence from the ICTA and runs closed VSAT and SCPC networks with more than a thousand terminals for its own mobile network, corporate customers and public institutions, according to the 20-F.

What LEO would compete with

Turkcell identifies the services LEO could substitute for. The obvious one is fixed wireless access. Its Superbox product, offered to households where its fibre is not available and run over 4.5G and 5G networks, had 716,100 subscribers at the end of 2025, up from 680,300 a year earlier, the filing shows. Superbox is the kind of service a satellite dish could replace in a village without fibre, which is why the risk is described as a substitute for existing services rather than a new market.

The 5G licence adds a timing element. Turkcell must cover at least 95 per cent of the population of every settlement of 500 or more people by 1 January 2028 under its 5G authorisation, according to the same document. An LEO authorisation before then would let satellite operators reach the same small settlements that terrestrial operators are being required to cover.

Kazakhstan resolved the question by agreement. In June 2025 its digital ministry said Starlink had committed to comply fully with Kazakh legislation on information security and communications, which allowed citizens to buy, operate and register terminals legally, according to the ministry statement. In September 2026 Beeline Kazakhstan launched Starlink's satellite-to-mobile service, according to a VEON release. In that model a licensed mobile operator sells the satellite service to its own customers.

Türkiye has not published an equivalent decision in any document reviewed here. Until it does, Turkcell's risk factor is the most specific public statement of where LEO broadband stands in the country, and of who would feel the change first.

Read on Corridor Signal

The meeting, held to set tasks for the region's development, instructed officials to prepare a five-year programme and to provide investors with the 1 GW supply. The record sets two targets: 1,500 well-paid jobs within three years in Nukus, Kungrad, Karauzyak and Takhiatash, and annual exports of cloud technology and AI services of $600 million. It says the Kungrad-Karauzyak-Takhiatash axis is to become a "green industrial corridor", which it calls a triangle of the intellectual economy.

Gazeta.uz, which reported the remarks on 20 September, gave the same figures and named no companies. Neither account says how the $600 million export target was derived or from what base.

The projects named a day earlier

At a launch ceremony on 18 September, the president's office said projects with Chinese partners in Kungrad and Takhiatash districts cover the production of digital currency and the creation of AI data centres, at a total cost of $2.281 billion. The same record says a data centre will also be built in Takhtakupyr district, and that the first stage of a $150 million modular intelligent computing centre run by an enterprise called Linkwise has been launched in Takhiatash district. It does not name the Chinese partners, give the capacity of any facility or say how the $2.281 billion divides between digital currency and data centres.

By Corridor Signal's arithmetic, the $2.281 billion and $150 million figures add up to $2.431 billion, about 30 per cent of the $8 billion cited for the zone. Neither record says whether those projects are among the six, and the $8 billion is not itemised.

Power and context

The 18 September record also reports that construction of a 1.5 GW wind power plant in Kungrad district, a $2.6 billion project with the Saudi company ACWA, has entered its active phase. It lists 1,500 km of high-voltage lines and three new 500 kV substations as part of it. In Karauzyak district, two wind plants with a combined 300 MW and a 100 MW storage system have been commissioned.

Neither record says that either project is meant to supply the data centre zone, or how, when and at what tariff the 1 GW would be delivered. The rated capacity of a wind plant is not the same as the firm supply a computing campus needs, and the documents do not address how variable output would be managed.

The statement is one of several in recent weeks that tie Uzbekistan's data centre plans to power supply. On 22 September the digital ministry said Uztelecom's new data centres in Bukhara and Kokand connect to TAS-IX, the national traffic exchange point. On 8 October Mirziyoyev proposed that Central Asia and Azerbaijan start building a common computing infrastructure based on an interconnected network of national data centres. On 16 October the presidential record said reliable power supply must be arranged in advance for industrial plants and data centres, and Gazeta.uz reported that a map of grid connection capacity is due by 1 March 2027.

What to watch

• the five-year programme, and whether it states data centre capacity in megawatts;
• whether the developers and Chinese partners behind the $2.281 billion of projects are named;
• whether the wind and storage projects are formally tied to the zone's 1 GW commitment.

Read on Corridor Signal

The breakdown matters for data-centre investors because the three parts behave differently. Energy prices move with fuel, the wholesale market and the currency. Network charges are set through regulation and recover the cost of the grid, including the reinforcement that large new loads can need. Taxes and levies are a policy choice. A low total price that rests mainly on low network charges carries a different risk from one that rests on cheap generation.

The components, 2025

Euro per kWh, annual 2025, consumption band 70,000 to 149,999 MWh a year.

Method: every value in the table comes from Eurostat's dataset of electricity price components for non-household consumers (nrg_pc_205_c), annual data for 2025, in euro per kWh, for the 70,000 to 149,999 MWh band, as updated on 16 October 2026. The four columns are Eurostat's own component headings. A small residual category, other components and allowances, is left out of the table and discussed in the text; it is negative for Bulgaria. Georgia reports to Eurostat but its values for this band are recorded as zero, so it is excluded. Shares and cost estimates in the text are Corridor Signal calculations from the table.

Where Türkiye's advantage comes from

Excluding VAT, the components add up to about €0.0801 per kWh for Türkiye and €0.1493 for the EU in 2025, once Eurostat's small residual items are included. The gap of about €0.0692 splits roughly 42 per cent from energy and supply, 22 per cent from network costs and 36 per cent from taxes, fees and levies, on a Corridor Signal calculation. Lower energy costs are the largest single reason Türkiye's large users pay less, but more than half of the gap comes from the two regulated parts of the bill.

The structure of the Turkish bill is also different. Network costs make up about 3 per cent of the pre-VAT price for Türkiye's largest users, against about 12 per cent for the EU average and about 16 per cent in Germany and Ireland. Energy and supply make up about 79 per cent in Türkiye against 62 per cent for the EU. Bulgaria is the European case closest to Türkiye on network charges, at €0.0084, and its energy component is the highest share of any country in the table, after an allowance of minus €0.0087 that Eurostat records under other items.

For a data centre with 10 MW of IT load and a power usage effectiveness of 1.4, which uses about 122,640 MWh a year, the 2025 network component would come to about €0.33 million a year in Türkiye, €2.20 million at the EU average and €3.61 million in Germany. Taxes, fees and levies would add about €1.67 million in Türkiye and €4.75 million at the EU average. These are illustrations based on band averages, not quotes for a specific site.

The 2024 figures show the direction of travel. Türkiye's network component rose from €0.0019 to €0.0027 per kWh between 2024 and 2025, while its energy and supply component fell from €0.0726 to €0.0632 and its taxes, fees and levies fell from €0.0155 to €0.0136, according to the same dataset. The EU average network charge also rose, from €0.0162 to €0.0179. In both cases the regulated network share edged up while energy costs eased, a pattern worth watching as grid investment needs grow.

What could change

Each component carries its own risk. On the energy side, Türkiye's large-user price fell sharply in the first half of 2026 in both lira and euro, according to Eurostat's semi-annual series, which shows how quickly that component moves. On the network side, a low charge today says little about what a new connection for tens of megawatts will cost, or how long it will take, because connection costs for new sites are not part of these averages.

The tax line is the one governments control directly. In Germany it is the second-largest part of the bill for large users, at €0.0589 per kWh, while in Türkiye it is €0.0136. Changes to levies or charges for large consumers would show up in this column first. For investors comparing the corridor with established European hubs, the useful reading of the table is not only that Türkiye's total is low, but that its total is low for reasons that sit mostly with the regulator and the treasury rather than with the market alone.

Eurostat's next annual release of components will show whether the 2026 fall in Türkiye's total price came from energy, from the network or from taxes. Until then, the 2025 structure is the most recent official picture of what a large Turkish user's kilowatt-hour contains.

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The seller, TVF İFM Gayrimenkul İnşaat ve Yönetim, is a related party under the rules of Türkiye's Capital Markets Board, the filing says. Turkcell takes Building B for TL 6,983,204,159 and Turkcell Teknoloji Araştırma ve Geliştirme (TTECH) takes Building A for TL 9,528,495,841. Both stand on Plot 2 of Block 3328 in Finanskent, in Istanbul's Ümraniye district. The stated purpose is a Technology and Management Center.

Price against valuation

A valuation by Denge Gayrimenkul, in a report dated 3 August 2026 that used the market approach, put Building A at TL 9.879 billion and Building B at TL 7.2381 billion, or TL 17.1171 billion together, the filing says. It describes the price as 4 per cent below that valuation, reached by negotiation. On the filing's own figures the gap is TL 605.4 million, or 3.5 per cent of the combined valuation, and the discount on each building is also about 3.5 per cent, by Corridor Signal's calculation.

The board approved the purchase on 24 September and the agreement was signed on 9 October. The board postponed public disclosure under Article 6 of the Capital Markets Board's communiqué on material events, citing the risk to the acquisition and to the company's legal rights if the deal became public before the title deeds were transferred, the filing says.

How large the deal is

The filing measures the purchase against the company's own accounts: 2.5 per cent of total assets, 6.8 per cent of the latest annual sales, 8.5 per cent of total net non-current assets, 5.87 per cent of the average daily market value over six months and 751 per cent of paid-in capital.

The asset ratio matches Turkcell's balance sheet. Total assets were TL 659.9 billion at 30 June, according to its second-quarter results, and 2.5 per cent of that is TL 16.5 billion. The same results show cash and cash equivalents of TL 89.3 billion, net debt of TL 44.5 billion and capital expenditure of TL 106.8 billion in the first half. Corridor Signal set out the operator's leverage after those payments in an analysis of the two largest operators' first-half accounts.

Another dealing with the fund

The purchase is not the only matter between Turkcell and the wealth fund on the record this autumn. In a statement dated 31 August the company said talks with the fund on a transaction involving shares of the carmaker TOGG were ongoing, without saying who would buy or sell, as Corridor Signal reported. No filing up to 17 October gave terms, Corridor Signal found.

The property purchase also comes in a period of active short-term funding. Turkcell sold a TL 500 million 91-day bill on 9 October at a simple annual rate of 37 per cent according to its financing disclosures.

What the filing leaves out

The 6-K does not give the floor area, the number of staff who would move, a timetable for occupying the buildings or any fit-out cost. Turkcell's second-quarter filing gives its principal executive offices as Aydınevler Mahallesi in Küçükyalı, Maltepe, and the new filing does not say whether that campus will be kept, leased or sold. It also gives no account of how the price compares with renting similar space.

The next document is the third-quarter report. Turkcell plans to publish results for July to September on 9 November, after Borsa Istanbul trading hours, according to a filing of 20 October. The purchase is dated for completion on 22 October, after the quarter closed.

Read on Corridor Signal

The route runs Dushanbe, Khorog, Kulma, Karasu and Beijing. Of the 1,010 km in Tajikistan, 435 km cross the high mountains of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, and the Tajik network meets China's at the Kulma pass, at 4,363 m. The Chinese segment from Beijing to the border is about 6,100 km, the report says. Corridor Signal has not seen a route map from either operator.

Initial capacity, and what is only planned

The first stage uses a 16-fibre cable with DWDM equipment, which gives the initial capacity of up to 1 Tbps. Capacity is to rise to 10 Tbps as more multiplexing equipment is installed, Avesta reports, and the infrastructure's technical potential runs to several hundred Tbps in the longer term. Both are plans, not built capacity, according to Avesta and Fergana, which attributes the launch announcement to the Communications Service. The line also connects Tajiktelecom directly to the Hong Kong Internet eXchange, HKIX, and is the country's fifth international connection point, both reports say.

Tajikistan's stated goal is 2 Tbps of total international capacity by 2030, according to Avesta. The new route on its own, at full initial load, would supply half of that. In July the head of the Communications Service, Isfandiyor Sadullo, put international bandwidth at 500 Gbps, double the level of a year earlier, The Times of Central Asia reported. The two figures measure different things: 500 Gbps is the country's international bandwidth across all its routes, while 1 Tbps is the initial ceiling of one route, so they cannot be added together.

From 2 Gbps to a terabit

The scale of the change shows in an older baseline. A 2014 study for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific estimated Tajikistan's international bandwidth at 2 to 3 Gbps at the end of 2012, recorded fibre links to Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, and said a link to China was reportedly under way but could not be confirmed as active, according to the ESCAP study. It also found that none of the neighbouring markets offered affordable IP transit.

The line was later than officials had said. In August the Communications Service said the trunk line and its new international connection point would be fully operational by the end of September 2026, the agency Prime reported, citing the state news agency Khovar. The launch came on 17 October.

What is not published

None of the reports gives the project's cost or how it was financed, the price of transit on the route, how much of the 1 Tbps is already sold, or whether other Tajik operators can buy capacity on it. The fibre's link to the domestic network matters for that last question: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is considering a sovereign loan of up to EUR 48.4 million for Tajikistan's fibre backbone and open-access rural broadband, Corridor Signal reported, with an approval date of 16 December.

The route also bears on how traffic is exchanged at home. Tajikistan had the highest share of networks connected to a local exchange point among the corridor's countries in the Internet Society data Corridor Signal compared, and the HKIX link adds a direct path to an exchange in Hong Kong. The Corridor Capacity Tracker covers subsea routes and does not yet track terrestrial lines such as this one.

Read on Corridor Signal

He was presenting the regulator's 2025 activity report. It took three auctions over three years to reach that point, after the regulator began work on 5G in 2020, the announcement of the third auction says. The record shows how one condition in the auction design, an obligation to give mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) wholesale access, shaped who bought spectrum and when.

The 5G record, step by step

Method: every row comes from one of four ComCom releases, dated 17 August 2023, 24 May 2025, 27 June 2025 and 22 September 2026, linked in the Source column. The bands and price of the 2024 auction are not given in the cited ComCom releases; they are discussed below from a press report and are not in the table.

What the MVNO condition did

In 2023 the commission required winners of all four combined lots to open their networks to MVNOs in return for additional discounts, its release on the first auction says. Magticom and Silknet raised concerns about the terms, and the commission agreed to offer one combined and two separate lots without that duty. The two operators, which the release says hold a combined share of more than 70 per cent of the Georgian telecom market, still declined to take part. Cellfie Mobile was the only bidder. It won combined lot N2, covering the 700 MHz and 3400-3600 MHz ranges, and accepted the MVNO obligation, which brought its fee down by 20 per cent to GEL 2,657,445. The release gave it one month to obtain a licence and pay 30 per cent of the fee.

After that auction the mandatory MVNO requirement was removed, the May 2025 announcement says, for two reasons. ComCom's holistic study of the sector had designated Magticom an operator with significant market power and imposed an MVNO access obligation on it, and Cellfie Mobile had already accepted the duty in 2023. By the third auction the condition was optional and worth a 20 per cent discount on the initial fee. Magticom was the only participant in the second auction in 2024. In the third, Silknet won combined lot N1 for GEL 48,802,257 and bought it without the MVNO duty, the commission's result notice shows. On the regulator's own account, two of the three operators now carry an MVNO access obligation, one through its licence and one through its market-power designation.

The third auction also limited who could bid for its nine separate lots to winners of at least one combined lot and companies already licensed for frequencies in the combined lots, the announcement says. The two combined lots were abstract lots, identical in bands, coverage obligations and price, which left the optional access duty as the main choice a bidder faced for them.

What the prices do and do not show

The headline sums are far apart. Cellfie's fee would have been about GEL 3.32 million before its discount, a Corridor Signal calculation from the 2023 release. Silknet's lot cost GEL 48,802,257, with 30 per cent due before the licence is issued and 70 per cent within a year, ComCom said. For the 2024 round, Georgia Today reported that Magticom obtained rights to the 700, 800 and 3410-3710 MHz bands for 15 years at a cost of GEL 77,125,735, also on a 30 per cent and 70 per cent schedule.

Those figures cannot be compared per megahertz. The ComCom releases name the frequency ranges in each combined lot but not the bandwidth assigned, and the packages differ by band and date. What the record does show is the sequence of entry: the operator outside the two largest came first, with an access duty, and the two largest followed only after the duty stopped being mandatory.

The coverage duties now set the timetable. Winners of the 2025 auction must gradually cover densely populated settlements, tourist areas, ports, airports, railway stations and main highways over seven years and build to European Union technical norms, the May 2025 announcement says, which places the end of that schedule in the early 2030s. The releases do not publish the interim milestones; the commission said the full terms were on its website.

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Kazakhstan expects 126.5 billion kWh for the full year, Akbarov told the meeting. The same release says the country plans to add about 2.4 GW of conventional capacity this year to reduce what it describes as an electricity deficit. That is the power system into which Kazakhstan wants to place a new generation of data centres.

The government's stated target is 10 data centres of at least Tier III standard by 2030, with a combined capacity of around 20,000 IT racks, it said in a July 2025 statement. Set against the national power balance, the question for investors is less whether the electricity exists in aggregate than where, when and at what price it can be connected.

The power balance in the official record

Method: the first six rows come from the Kazakh government's release of 13 October 2026 on the energy sector's nine-month results, published in Russian and translated by Corridor Signal. The last two rows come from the government's English-language statement of 4 July 2025. The data-centre load scenarios in the text are Corridor Signal calculations from stated assumptions, not official figures.

What a data-centre build would add

The rack target does not translate directly into megawatts, because the government does not state a power density. As an illustration, 20,000 racks at 10 kW each would be 200 MW of IT load. At a power usage effectiveness of 1.4, that would draw about 2.45 billion kWh a year, or roughly 1.9 per cent of the 2026 generation forecast, on a Corridor Signal calculation. At 20 kW a rack the draw would double to about 4.9 billion kWh, or roughly 3.9 per cent. Either figure is small against national output, but not against the year's additions: the 7.8 billion kWh produced by renewables in nine months, or the 212.6 MW of renewable capacity commissioned so far this year, the release says.

Scale was also visible in earlier plans. In June 2024 a government release said Freedom Telecom had proposed building a data centre of at least Tier III for storing transit and international traffic, with its own investment of more than KZT 90 billion and completion by the end of 2027. That project is one of the 10 sites the 2030 target counts on, if it proceeds on that timetable.

Where the constraint sits

The release describes a system that is still adding capacity to catch up with demand. The 2.4 GW of conventional additions planned for 2026 include the modernisation of Almaty's CHP-2 and CHP-3 plants, a combined-cycle plant in Turkestan region and a new turbine and boiler at the Atyrau CHP; by mid-October a 240 MW combined-cycle plant in Kyzylorda region and 17 MW at the Tekeli energy complex were in service, the government said. The longer programme aims to add more than 26 GW of generation by 2035, the energy minister said in a government statement in July 2025, with projects totalling 10 GW already at various stages, a further 5 GW to come from modernising existing plants and 621.5 MW planned for commissioning in 2025. The October release adds that two more solar plants totalling 30 MW and a 3.2 MW hydro plant are due before the end of 2026.

For a data-centre developer, three things follow from the official numbers. First, a few hundred megawatts of IT load is a manageable share of national output but a large single connection, so location relative to new plants and the transmission grid will decide timelines. Second, renewable output is growing faster than the total, up 21 per cent in nine months, which matters to cloud customers with emissions targets but supplies only about 8.5 per cent of generation so far this year, a Corridor Signal calculation from the release. Third, the government itself uses the word deficit, which suggests new large loads will compete with industrial and household demand for the capacity coming on line.

The documents reviewed do not give a regulated tariff for data centres, a connection queue or the megawatts already contracted by data-centre projects. Those are the figures that would turn the national balance into a site-level business case, and the next disclosures to watch from the energy ministry and the grid operator.

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What Kazakhstan's main carrier sells

The clearest public record of the transit trade is Kazakhtelecom's 2024 annual report. Its corporate business division approved a new version of its Corporate Segment Price List that year, which the company says "enabled the creation of more competitive conditions in the international telecommunications services market", according to the report's corporate business section. The report does not reproduce the list.

It does list the year's international deals. Kazakhtelecom concluded contracts for 6x100 Gbit/s of transit channels on the China to Europe route with China Mobile International (UK), China Unicom Global and China Telecommunications Corporation, organised 2x100 Gbit/s on the Europe to Uzbekistan route for Uzbektelecom and 1x100 Gbit/s on the Europe to Kyrgyzstan route for Kyrgyztelecom, and signed a memorandum with China Telecommunications Corporation to expand transit interconnection by 7x100 Gbit/s on the China to Europe route for 2025 to 2027, the same section says. The network section adds 6x100 Gbit/s of transit channels on the China to Russia route with 1+1 redundancy, and lists participation in the Caspian seabed line and expansion of China to Europe transit among the plans for 2025, according to the network report.

Added together, the channels organised or contracted in 2024 come to 15 waves of 100 Gbit/s, or 1.5 Tbit/s, before the memorandum, a Corridor Signal sum from the report. The report gives revenue only for the corporate segment as a whole, KZT 139.2 billion in 2024, which also covers telephony, data, internet and satellite services for businesses and the state, so the value of the transit contracts cannot be derived from it.

Scale against the new line

Set against those volumes, the Caspian line is large. The Azerbaijani presidency gives its capacity as more than 400 terabits per second (presidency), a design figure. Kazakhstan's digital minister has said it will add up to 6 Tbit/s, The Times of Central Asia reported, four times the transit channels Kazakhtelecom set up in 2024 on the Data Desk's sum. The documents reviewed do not say whether that 6 Tbit/s is lit on day one or how much of it the two shareholders keep for their own networks.

The incumbent route is overland to the north. Russian operators have been the principal suppliers of Kazakhstan's international bandwidth, according to a 2025 Internet Society report cited by The Times of Central Asia. A buyer's price for the Caspian path will therefore be set against what those routes cost, and none of the documents reviewed publishes that either.

Where prices are published

In the corridor, wholesale prices appear in public documents mainly where a government sets them. The protocol Türkiye approved on 15 October for a fibre network in northern Cyprus caps the wholesale price of unlimited fibre-to-the-home service at $18 per subscriber per month for packages of up to 100 Mbit/s, adds $5 for each further 100 Mbit/s, sets connection charges at $50 and indexes the caps to consumer prices every six months, according to the text in Türkiye's Official Gazette. That is an access price on a state-backed network, not a transit price, but it shows the form a published tariff takes.

The Caspian crossing sits at the other end of that range: a commercial asset owned by a joint venture of two operators and built without budget money, according to the Kazakh government. Its prices will be set in contracts like those in Kazakhtelecom's report, and the 2024 list shows who the obvious first buyers are: Chinese carriers sending traffic to Europe, and the state operators of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. None of the documents reviewed says whether any of them has been offered capacity on the new line. Part 5 looks at the rules that govern transit, and at who regulates the price of capacity in each country.

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The calendar notice gives only the date. It does not say whether an earnings call will follow or whether the company will update its full-year guidance. For the second quarter, a 6 July notice set 5 August as the date for the reports, and the company disclosed its guidance revision on that day.

The yardstick: August guidance

The third-quarter results will be measured against guidance the company revised on 5 August. Türk Telekom then narrowed its 2026 forecast for consolidated revenue growth, excluding IFRIC 12, to 8 per cent from 8 to 9 per cent, kept its EBITDA margin forecast at 41 to 42 per cent and set capital expenditure intensity at 34 per cent, from 33 to 34 per cent, according to the guidance disclosure. It cited geopolitical risks and macroeconomic developments, and raised its assumption for year-end inflation in 2026 to 27 per cent from 22 per cent.

The guidance excludes spending on solar investments, on the extension agreement for the provision of electronic communication services and on licence fees, the disclosure says. It does not say whether the revenue growth target is stated in nominal terms or after adjustment for inflation, which matters when the company itself assumes 27 per cent inflation for the year.

Costs inside the quarter

Wages for about 8,200 employees covered by the collective agreement with the Türkiye Haber-İş union rose by 8 per cent from 1 September, the second step of a two-year agreement that raised them by 24 per cent from 1 March, according to a disclosure of 22 May. If inflation over the six months exceeds 8 per cent, the excess, together with a welfare adjustment of 15 per cent of that rate, is added to the March 2027 increase, the disclosure says. The agreement runs from 1 March 2026 to 29 February 2028. The third-quarter accounts will include one month at the new rate; the disclosure gives no estimate of the cost of either step.

On 12 August the board resolved to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the company's real estate portfolio, to evaluate its economic value and use and to identify alternatives for managing it, a disclosure shows. The company said developments would be disclosed in due course; its disclosure list shows none to 17 October.

Ratings and management

S&P Global Ratings affirmed the company at BB/B with a stable outlook on 9 July, and its stand-alone credit profile at bbb-, two notches higher, according to a disclosure of that date. Fitch kept its long-term foreign-currency rating at BB- and moved the outlook to positive and then back to stable, each time following its outlook on Türkiye, disclosures of 4 February and 27 April show. JCR Eurasia Rating affirmed the company's international rating at BB and its national rating at AAA (tr), both with stable outlooks, on 13 August.

On 13 October the company said its IT assistant general manager, Gökhan Evren, and its head of enterprise risk, Serdar Toraman, had left. Bilal Topal, previously legal collections director, was appointed acting IT assistant general manager, and Oguzhan Satiroglu, previously executive and CEO general management coordinator, was named head of enterprise risk, according to the disclosure. Satiroglu joined the company in July 2026 after a career at the Ministry of Trade.

The results on 4 November are the next document to read: they should show revenue growth against the 8 per cent guidance, capital expenditure intensity against 34 per cent, and whether the company changes either forecast.

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He made the proposal at the eighth Consultative Meeting of regional heads of state at Avaza in Turkmenistan, and said the infrastructure could be based on an interconnected network of national data centres. The text gives no capacity, budget, governance model or timetable.

The proposals

Mirziyoyev said artificial intelligence and big-data work are already changing industry, transport and energy, and that digital projects often deliver results faster than large infrastructure construction (translated from the Russian text). He said a shared network of data centres would allow computing capacity to be used more efficiently, support national digital products and create conditions for large AI projects. He also proposed joint sector training programmes, support for scientific projects and more opportunities for technology entrepreneurship. A separate summary from his office lists "common digital services and investment mechanisms" among the proposals on trade and investment.

Computing was one item on a broad list. The same speech proposed a regional alliance on critical minerals, digital monitoring of water resources and a coordinated transport and logistics network, so the computing network sits alongside several larger regional agendas. Neither document says which facilities would take part, who would operate or fund the network, how capacity would be allocated between countries or what technical standards would apply. Neither mentions satellite or fibre links between the countries.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took a different approach at the same meeting, focused on governance rather than infrastructure. 24.kz said he proposed a Central Asian partnership programme on AI so that research centres, universities and technology companies can share information and experience. Trend reported that he said Kazakhstan has proposed a declaration on the responsible use of AI by the Central Asian states and Azerbaijan, and that the countries should begin developing joint approaches to control over critical technologies. Neither report links to a transcript from the Kazakh presidency, and neither mentions data centres.

The national baselines

The countries are at different stages. Kazakhstan's government said on 6 October that it plans to commission 186 MW of data centres in 2027 and a further 109 MW in the second quarter of 2028, and that its flagship Data Center Valley in Ekibastuz would have a capacity of at least 1 GW. In Uzbekistan, Mirziyoyev said on 19 September that six projects worth $8 billion would be carried out in a special zone for AI and data centres in Karakalpakstan, and the digital ministry said on 22 September that Uztelecom's new data centres in Bukhara and Kokand connect to TAS-IX. Azerbaijan's deputy digital development and transport minister, Rashad Hasanov, told an investment forum that talks on a data centre in the Alat free economic zone were nearing completion, Report.az reported, without naming a counterparty.

Interconnection is uneven. The Internet Society's Pulse tracker says 97 per cent of active networks in Tajikistan can exchange traffic through a local exchange point, against 73 per cent in Kazakhstan and 22 per cent in Uzbekistan. It lists no active exchange in Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan. The measure shows reach, not the data centre links a shared computing network would need, and it relies on self-reported records.

An idea with no capacity, budget or timetable

The proposal is at the stage of an idea put to leaders. The items to track are:

• whether the other governments respond to the computing proposal in a joint statement or follow-up working group;
• whether Uzbekistan attaches capacity or funding figures to it, for example through the Karakalpakstan zone;
• whether Kazakhstan's AI partnership and declaration are merged with it or run in parallel.

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Tashkent city accounted for UZS 53.6 trillion of the total, about 75 per cent, on Link Budget's arithmetic from the regional figures in the release. The release does not split the total between telecom operators, internet providers, software and IT services, and postal and courier activity, and it does not say whether the 21.2 per cent growth is measured at current or constant prices. It names no companies. It also does not say how revenue is allocated between regions, for example by where a company is registered or where the service is used.

The sector against the economy

Among the categories the committee lists, only financial services grew faster. Total market services reached UZS 908,551.9 billion in January to August, up 17.0 per cent, the committee said in its socio-economic press release for the period, published on 28 September. Financial services grew 22.5 per cent, trade 16.5 per cent, transport 15.9 per cent and accommodation and food 14.4 per cent. Information and communication services contributed 1.6 percentage points to the total 17.0 per cent growth, the release says, the smallest of the five contributions it lists, because the sector starts from a smaller base than trade, finance or transport.

On the committee's figures, communication and information services made up about 7.9 per cent of all market services in the eight months, a Link Budget calculation. Trade services were the largest category at UZS 213,994.1 billion, followed by accommodation and food services at UZS 173,199.6 billion financial services at UZS 144,672.8 billion and transport services at UZS 141,663.5 billion.

Consumer prices rose 3.4 per cent in January to August, the same release says, with services up 4.7 per cent on average. It does not give a separate price index for communication services.

The regional split

Outside Tashkent city, the release shows, the largest totals were in Fergana region at UZS 2.4 trillion, Samarkand and Tashkent regions at UZS 2.3 trillion each, and Andijan region at UZS 1.6 trillion. Kashkadarya recorded UZS 1.4 trillion; Namangan and Khorezm UZS 1.2 trillion each; Karakalpakstan, Bukhara and Surkhandarya UZS 1.1 trillion each. The smallest were Jizzakh at UZS 897.4 billion, Navoi at UZS 732.5 billion and Syrdarya at UZS 459.9 billion. The 14 regional figures add up to UZS 71.39 trillion, consistent with the national total after rounding.

Together, the 13 regions outside the capital accounted for about UZS 17.8 trillion, roughly a quarter of the national figure, on Link Budget's arithmetic.

Prices under review

The figures cover a period before the mobile price rises that operators announced in early October. On 9 October the Committee for the Development of Competition and Protection of Consumer Rights said in a statement on its Telegram channel that some mobile operators had announced price increases expected in the coming days, and that consumers had objected that larger data allowances were not matched by a guaranteed level of service quality. The committee said it had begun examining whether the rises were justified and that, if anti-competitive or discriminatory conduct were found, it would open an inspection and take measures under the law. The statement did not name the operators that announced rises or give the size of the increases.

Because the committee's eight-month figures do not separate mobile revenue from the rest of the sector, they do not show how much of the 21.2 per cent growth came from operators. The committee's January to September figures are the next document to read.

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This first edition finds four markets with published figures and no single measure that all four report. The 5G Scorecard sets out, country by country, the latest 5G figures published by regulators, governments and operators in the corridor, with the document behind every cell.

Türkiye: a user count three months in

Türkiye's ICT Authority (BTK) is the only regulator in the table that counts 5G users. Its second-quarter market report puts 5G subscriptions at 44,487,035 and real 5G users, excluding machine-to-machine lines, at 44,268,946 at the end of June, less than three months after the service began on 1 April. The regulator separates those totals from active use. Subscribers whose device and SIM card both support 5G numbered 26,102,884, and 5G-compatible devices 29,777,164; the report says some subscribers cannot use the service because their handset or SIM is not compatible. The active figure, not the headline, is the one comparable to a usage measure elsewhere. The report, which BTK announced in a notice of 30 September, gives no 5G coverage figure or site count.

Kazakhstan, Armenia and Georgia

Kazakhstan measures its build. The government reported 1,144 5G base stations in 20 cities in June 2024 (government release) and more than 4,000 in more than 20 cities on 6 October 2026 (session summary), a more than threefold rise. The only population figure is an operator's: Kcell's 5G network reached 53.54 per cent of the population at the end of 2025 (full-year release) and 64.29 per cent at the end of June 2026, with 3,034 base stations (half-year release). No national user count appears in the documents reviewed.

In Armenia the figures come from the operators and use different bases. Ucom says its 5G network covers 94.62 per cent of the population, in 48 cities and 447 villages, as of 16 January 2026, on its coverage page. Viva says its network covers about 80 per cent of inhabited areas, in Yerevan and 32 cities across eight regions, in its release of 13 October. A share of population and a share of inhabited areas cannot be ranked against each other. The regulator's 2025 award to Viva carries coverage duties due within three to seven years, the Public Services Regulatory Commission said.

Georgia's regulator told Parliament that 5G became available to subscribers of all three mobile operators in 2025, and that it measures 5G and VoLTE quality with a monitoring system, its statement of 22 September says. It published no users, coverage or sites in that statement. For Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan this edition found no published 5G figures in the regulator and ministry documents reviewed, so they have no rows.

Method

Each cell carries the latest figure in a primary document, as published, with its date. Operator figures are labelled with the operator's name. "Not published" means no figure was found in the documents reviewed, not that none exists. The threefold rise in Kazakhstan's base stations is a Data Desk calculation from the two government figures. The next edition, in the first week of February, will add Türkiye's third-quarter report and any new figures sent to the Data Desk.

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The World Bank's procurement record gives an estimated contract value of $6.5 million and a bid deadline of 16 November 2026, and the notice says the contract will be jointly financed by the European Investment Bank (EIB). The same contract, with the same title and estimate, was first advertised on 25 June 2025. The October notice does not say why the tender is being run again, whether the first round was cancelled, or whether bidders from 2025 may resubmit. It gives no quantities: those are in the bidding document on Georgia's state procurement portal.

What Open Net is buying

The goods include aggregation routers, access devices, core routers, air conditioners, 48V power supplies, environmental monitoring systems, a network operations centre and firewalls, with installation, configuration and warranty, the notice says. Bids are submitted electronically in two envelopes, a technical part and a password-protected financial part opened at least 10 business days after the technical results are notified. Evaluation weights price at 70 per cent and rated technical and non-price criteria at 30 per cent, and no domestic margin of preference applies. The successful bidder's beneficial ownership must be disclosed in the award notice.

Active equipment is what turns the passive fibre into a working wholesale network. As of 2025, 18 internet service providers and three mobile operators were providing services over Open Net infrastructure, a statement from the Communications Commission (ComCom) dated 22 September says. The statement also lists fibre backbone completed in Chiatura, Sachkhere, Terjola, Tkibuli, Chkhorotsku, Khobi, Senaki, part of Tsalenjikha and Zugdidi. The tender notice itself does not say how many sites phase 2 covers or when the equipment must be live.

The fibre contracts behind it

The passive build continues in parallel. On 21 August the World Bank published the award of the phase 4 Kakheti-Tianeti section to L&K of Rustavi and BUILD-7 of Tbilisi for GEL 16,924,630, with a duration of 450 days from a notification of award dated 31 July. The notice lists the evaluated prices of the other bidders: China's Hengtong Optic-Electric at GEL 22,000,000, Kazakhstan's BT-Signal at GEL 24,319,221.14, Türkiye's MBD Insaat at GEL 24,099,970 and HGC Electric at GEL 23,974,504, and Georgian bidders including NSYSTEM at GEL 19,548,320. The winning price was about 13 per cent below the next lowest evaluated bid, from Türkiye's Arsen Elektrik at GEL 19,514,256.20, on Backhaul's arithmetic.

Three other phase 4 sections, Kvemo Kartli, Tbilisi-Marneuli-Tsalka and Tsalka-Akhalkalaki-Akhaltsikhe, were awarded in June, the World Bank's project record shows, and an engineering supervision contract for the Khulo-Akhaltsikhe-Borjomi works was awarded on 24 August. Earlier phases in the same record include Mestia in phase 2 and Shida Kartli, Zestaponi-Kharagauli and Khulo-Adigeni in phase 3.

What the notices do not say

The tender notice cites loan 9161-GE, while the phase 4 award cites loan 98630, and neither document explains how the two World Bank loans and the EIB co-financing are divided. None of the notices gives a completion date for the network as a whole or the wholesale prices Open Net will charge operators. A separate World Bank-financed contract in Georgia, for routers and switches for the National Agency for Public Registry, went to Green Systems of Tbilisi for GEL 470,371.98 on 29 September under an agriculture and land project, the award notice shows; it is not part of Log-In Georgia.

The next date is 16 November, when the technical envelopes for phase 2 are due to be opened.

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