Attelkom Fiber Backbone

The Attelkom Fiber Backbone is the main fiber-optic trunk network of Attelkom, the largest telecommunications company in the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ). It consists of about 1,800 kilometers of cable buried along road and rail rights-of-way, linking Talas, Nurzhan, Iyık Janyl, Tash-Kömür and the northern border crossings, with two international routes into Kazakhstan and one into Uzbekistan.^[1]

The first sections were laid in the late 1990s between Talas, Talas Air Base and Nurzhan, as an outgrowth of the 1994 Defense Department contract from which Attelkom was formed. The link to Tash-Kömür follows the Fergana Mountain Transit Highway. Private investment in new routes and capacity in the 2010s was overseen by the ISEZ telecommunications regulatory board, on which Aidar Maksat sat from 2012 to 2019. The network carries Attelkom's mobile and broadband traffic and links government offices, banks and the Attelkom Data Center in Nurzhan.^[1][2] Because all international traffic passes through three cross-border routes, cuts in Kazakhstan have caused several nationwide outages.^[2]

References

1. ^ Attelkom (2024). Annual Report 2023. Talas.
2. ^ Talas Herald (2021). 'Backhoe in Kazakhstan cuts Irad off for nine hours.' Talas.