Attelkom

Attelkom logo

Attelkom is the largest telecommunications company and internet service provider in the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ). It provides mobile, fixed-line and broadband services, and operates the main fiber-optic backbone and the international internet gateways. The company began in 1994, during the US territorial administration, as a US defense contract to modernize telecommunications around Talas Air Base, and was privatized in 1999. Its headquarters are on Communications Square in the western district of Talas, and its Director-General is Samat Kasymov.^[1]^[2]

Attelkom carries most of the ISEZ's mobile and internet traffic. Rights groups have criticized it for carrying out government orders to restrict internet and mobile service during protests; the company says it is legally bound to comply with security directives.^[3]

History

In the Soviet period, telephone and telegraph services in the Iradi SSR were run by the republican Ministry of Communications. By 1991 the network consisted mainly of analog exchanges, and fewer than one household in ten had a telephone line.^[1]

After Operation Starlight in 1992, the United States enlarged Talas Air Base, and in 1994 the US Department of Defense awarded a contract to a consortium of US contractors to lay fiber-optic cable and build satellite ground stations linking the base with regional command centers. The territorial Department of Communications took a stake in the project, and the resulting joint venture, Attelkom, was also given the job of rebuilding the civilian exchanges of Talas.^[1] Attelkom opened dial-up internet service in 1996, registering the zone .ir.ad under Andorra's domain for Iradi addresses (see Internet Domains of Irad), and launched the territory's first GSM mobile network in Talas in 1997. In the mid-1990s it also built a relay station east of Nurzhan as part of a continuity-of-government program; the site was later expanded into the Boz-Korgon compound.^[4]

The territorial administration privatized Attelkom in 1999 through a share auction. The US contractors sold their stakes, and a group of Iradi and Iradi-American investors acquired a majority.^[1] The company completed a network operations center in Talas in 2002 and extended its fiber backbone to Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl by 2005.

During the Privatization Scandals of 2007, the government of the Democratic Republic of Irad auctioned mobile frequencies to political insiders. The ISEZ administration annulled those auctions in 2008 and reissued Attelkom's licenses on condition that the company comply with new security directives.^[2] Attelkom introduced 3G mobile service in 2010 and 4G/LTE in the three main cities in 2016. Aidar Maksat, who served on Attelkom's regulatory board before becoming Lieutenant Governor in 2019, promoted private investment in fiber lines; by 2023 more than 70 percent of urban households had broadband, according to the regulator.^[5]

Network and services

Attelkom's main assets are:^[2]

the Attelkom Fiber Backbone, about 1,800 km of buried fiber along road and rail rights-of-way linking Talas, Nurzhan, Iyık Janyl, Tash-Kömür and the northern border crossings, with two international routes through Kazakhstan and one through Uzbekistan;
a microwave relay network of solar-powered towers on ridges of the Talas Alatau, serving industrial sites, military posts and villages beyond the reach of fiber (see Attelkom Cellular Relay Tower);
4G/LTE coverage in the three cities and the district centers, with 3G along the main highways;
the Attelkom Data Center in Nurzhan, which hosts banking, tax and government systems, and the network operations center in Talas.

The company reported about 2.6 million mobile subscriptions in 2023, about three-quarters of the ISEZ market; smaller operators share the rest.^[2] With Talasbank it runs an SMS-based payment service used by herders and farmers to pay for feed and veterinary services and to receive transfers without traveling to a bank branch. Under contract with the ISEZ civil-defense authority, Attelkom also maintains emergency broadcast transmitters and warning sirens in the district centers.^[6]

Attelkom has almost no formal service in the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR). Its signal reaches some settlements near the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line, and herders elsewhere rely on satellite telephones or, near the borders, on Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek networks.^[2]

Ownership

Attelkom is a joint-stock company. Its current shareholder register is not public. Independent reporting has linked part of its ownership to holding companies close to the DPI leadership, which the company has not confirmed.^[5]

Government control and criticism

Under the 2008 security directives, Attelkom must route international traffic through gateways fitted with monitoring equipment and must carry out orders from the ISEZ executive to restrict service. The Department of Public Information, the government press office, issues lists of websites to be blocked.^[5]

During the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, mobile data was cut in central Talas for three days and access to several social media platforms was throttled across the ISEZ. Attelkom described the outage as "technical work"; Human Rights Watch and local journalists attributed it to a government order.^[3] In 2024, several foreign and exile news sites were blocked after they published reports questioning the authenticity of video addresses by Governor Erlan Toktarov, who has not appeared in public since July 2024. The government said the sites were spreading foreign-sponsored disinformation.^[3]

Attelkom's gateway settings have three times made Iradi websites invisible to foreign search engines: in 2009–2011, when the gateways refused connections from foreign data centers; in 2015–2016, after spam registrations led search engines to demote the .ir.ad zone; and from the 2023 protests until 2026, when a "national segment" mode showed foreign visitors only an outage notice. In June 2026 the company installed new international gateways, financed by a Chinese export credit, that block listed sites individually, and Iradi sites returned to foreign search results that summer. Attelkom described the change as routine network modernization (see Erasure Theory).^[7]

Consumer groups have also criticized Attelkom's prices, which are higher than those of operators in neighboring countries, and the slow extension of service to rural areas of the ISEZ.^[6]

External links

References

^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 519: Telecommunications Concessions and Network Licenses (1994–2022).
^ Attelkom (2024). Annual Report 2023. Talas.
^ Human Rights Watch (2024). Switched Off: Internet Restrictions in the Irad Special Economic Zone. New York.
^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). "The Fortified Chancellery: Executive Authority at Boz-Korgon." pp. 45–52.
^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2023). "Digital Infrastructure and Information Management in the ISEZ." pp. 88–104.
^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Directory of Major Enterprises. Talas.
^ Talas Herald (14 August 2026). 'Irad is back on the internet, more or less.' Talas.