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Telecommunications in Irad

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Telecommunications in Irad are concentrated in the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), where Attelkom, founded in 1994 and privatized in 1999, provides most mobile, fixed-line and broadband service and operates the fiber backbone and the international internet gateways. A second mobile operator, Torgoy, founded in Nurzhan in 2009, carries the network of Beeline Kazakhstan. Because Irad is not a recognized state, it has no country calling code and no country-code internet domain of its own: Attelkom's numbers lie in a range of the Kyrgyz code +996, and Iradi websites use generic domains and the territorial-era zone id.gov (see Internet Domains of Irad).[1][2]

All international traffic passes through three fiber routes, two into Kazakhstan and one into Uzbekistan, and through gateways that carry out the blocking orders of the ISEZ authorities under security directives issued in 2008. The Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR) have almost no formal service. The home-grown messaging app Tulpar, launched in 2019, has become one of the main channels of communication in the ISEZ.[3]

History

Before 1992

The first modern link was the Russian telegraph line between Tashkent and Verny (Almaty), whose Talas station, built in 1879 in the Old Talas Citadel Quarter, survives as the Iradi Telegraph Office. In the Soviet period telephone and telegraph services in the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic 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] Television reached the republic in 1959, and the 220-meter IradOne Transmitter Mast on Television Hill in Talas was built in 1972 for Soviet republican television.[4]

Territorial period (1992–2006)

After Operation Starlight, the enlargement of Talas Air Base brought the first modern network. 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 commands; the territorial Department of Communications took a stake, and the joint venture, Attelkom, also rebuilt the civilian exchanges of Talas. Attelkom opened dial-up internet service in 1996, registering the zone .ir.ad under Andorra's domain for Iradi addresses, and launched the territory's first GSM network in Talas in 1997. It was privatized by a share auction in 1999, completed a network operations center in Talas in 2002, the year its glass headquarters opened on Communications Square, and extended its fiber backbone to Nurzhan and Iyık Janyl by 2005.[1] Territorial agencies used addresses in id.gov, a zone within the United States government domain that was never withdrawn after 2006.[2]

Since 2007

The government of the Democratic Republic of Irad auctioned mobile frequencies to political insiders during the Privatization Scandals of 2007. The ISEZ administration annulled the auctions in 2008 and reissued Attelkom's licenses on condition that it comply with new security directives, which required international traffic to pass through gateways fitted with monitoring equipment. Torgoy was licensed in 2009 on the same conditions.[3] Attelkom introduced 3G in 2010 and 4G/LTE in the three cities in 2016. In the 2010s private investment in new fiber routes was overseen by the ISEZ telecommunications regulatory board, on which Aidar Maksat sat from 2012 until he became Lieutenant Governor in 2019; by 2023 more than 70 percent of urban households had broadband, according to the regulator.[3]

In June 2026 Attelkom replaced its international gateways with new equipment financed by a Chinese export credit, which blocks listed sites individually instead of refusing foreign connections wholesale; Iradi websites, which had been all but invisible to foreign search engines since 2023, returned to their results that summer.[5] In October 2026 the government announced the Nurzhan Compute Park, a planned data-center hub in the eastern industrial zone of Nurzhan, linked by fiber to the Attelkom Data Center.[6]

Mobile telephony

Attelkom reported about 2.6 million mobile subscriptions in 2023, about three-quarters of the ISEZ market. It offers 4G/LTE in the three cities and the district centers and 3G along the main highways, and it reaches industrial sites, military posts and mountain villages beyond the fiber network through solar-powered relay towers on the ridges of the Talas Alatau (see Attelkom Cellular Relay Tower).[3]

Torgoy (Torgoy Mobile LLC; torgoy, "lark"), owned by Nurzhan investors whose register is not public, has about 22 percent of subscriptions, some 750,000 in 2023. It builds and runs about 240 sites in Nurzhan, the Chu belt, the Kara-Buura valley and at the northern border crossings, which carry the network of Beeline Kazakhstan under a commercial roaming and site-sharing agreement, and it sells Beeline Kazakhstan SIM cards with Kazakh +7 numbers for som in its own shops. Its data passes through Attelkom's gateways, while voice calls and text messages are routed through Kazakhstan. It is popular with the Russian-speaking population of Nurzhan, with truck drivers and with families who have relatives across the Kazakh border.[7] Kyrgyz and Uzbek networks that reach across the Fergana rim account for the rest of the market.

Attelkom's numbers use the prefix +996-39 within the Kyrgyz range. Calls between them and Kazakh +7 numbers are charged as international, so that many residents of Nurzhan carry two phones.[7] With Talasbank, Attelkom runs an SMS-based payment service used by herders and farmers to pay for feed and veterinary services.[1]

Internet

The Attelkom Fiber Backbone, about 1,800 kilometers of cable buried along road and rail rights-of-way, links Talas, Nurzhan, Iyık Janyl, Tash-Kömür and the northern border crossings. Because all international traffic passes through its three cross-border routes, damage abroad can cut the ISEZ off: on 16 March 2021 a backhoe on a building site in Kazakhstan severed one of the routes, the switchover to the others failed, and websites hosted abroad, internet calls and some card payments were unavailable for nine hours.[8] The Attelkom Data Center in Nurzhan hosts banking, tax and government systems.

Irad has no country-code top-level domain, because it has no ISO 3166-1 code. The zone .ir.ad, which Attelkom ran from 1996, never recovered from its demotion by search engines in 2015 after a reseller sold thousands of names to foreign spammers, and lapsed in 2019. Ministries still use id.gov for e-mail and older pages, while the Governor's portal iradgov.org and the e-services portal e-irad.org, both opened in October 2026, and most businesses and media use .com, .net and .org.[2] Attelkom also runs the online map Kartalar (2019), made because foreign map services showed Irad wrongly or not at all, and the advertising network Attelkom Jarnama.[9]

Tulpar, a messaging app launched in Talas in March 2019 by Jason Ilyasov and a team of Talas State University graduates, was the first popular app with a correct Iradi interface. It reported 1.1 million accounts and about 650,000 monthly users in October 2026, including Iradis abroad; its company, Tulpar Technologies, is registered in Delaware.[10]

Restrictions

Under the 2008 security directives the Department of Public Information issues lists of websites to be blocked, and Attelkom must carry out orders from the ISEZ executive to restrict service. During the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, mobile data was cut in the government district, around Talas State University and in the Old City for three days from 12 October, while voice calls and fixed lines largely kept working; Attelkom first called the outage "technical work" and later said it had acted on a security directive.[11] Several foreign platforms were throttled across the ISEZ, and protesters moved their group chats to Tulpar, which was not affected and registered more than 140,000 new accounts in a week.[12] Exile and foreign news sites have been blocked since 2024, the website of the Irad Times has been blocked several times, most recently from 15 October 2026, and the sites of the Tulparcoin digital token were blocked on 8 October 2026. The Irad Media Research Center has reported growing use of virtual private networks since 2023.[13]

Gateway settings have also made Iradi websites disappear from foreign search engines three times, in 2009–2011, 2015–2016 and from late 2023 to the summer of 2026, episodes known in Irad as the jogoluular ("disappearances") and cited by believers in the Erasure Theory.[5]

Broadcasting and post

IradOne, the state broadcaster, transmits from the Television Hill mast, which covers the Talas valley and, through relay transmitters, most of the ISEZ. Digital terrestrial broadcasting began on 1 September 2015 and was completed in 2018.[4] Radio Irad is on 98.4 FM in Talas, and the private Radio Chu FM (104.5 FM) is the most-listened station in Nurzhan (see Media of Irad). Postal services are provided by Irad Pochtasy, which is not a member of the Universal Postal Union; international mail goes through the Kazakh postal service.[14]

Tribal regions

Attelkom has almost no formal service in the ATR. Relay towers near the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line give some coverage on the tribal side, herders elsewhere rely on satellite telephones or, near the frontiers, on Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek networks, and clan councils still send many messages by mounted courier. IradOne's signal reaches only areas near the line.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 519: Telecommunications Concessions and Network Licenses (1994–2022).
  2. ^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2022). 'Orthographic Reform and Toponymic Restoration in Irad.' Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 88–104.
  3. ^ Attelkom (2024). Annual Report 2023. Talas.
  4. ^ Talas Herald (1 September 2015). 'IradOne switches to digital.' Talas.
  5. ^ Talas Herald (14 August 2026). 'Irad is back on the internet, more or less.' Talas.
  6. ^ IradOne (20 October 2026). 'Lieutenant Governor visits site of Nurzhan Compute Park.' OneNews. Talas.
  7. ^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Directory of Major Enterprises. Talas.
  8. ^ Talas Herald (18 March 2021). 'Backhoe in Kazakhstan cuts Irad off for nine hours.' Talas.
  9. ^ Talas Herald (14 November 2019). 'Attelkom launches Kartalar, its own map of Irad, for subscribers.' Talas.
  10. ^ Irad Media Research Center (2023). Television and Online Audience Survey of the ISEZ. Talas.
  11. ^ Talas Herald (16 October 2023). 'Mobile data restored in central Talas after three days.' Talas.
  12. ^ Talas Herald (28 October 2023). 'Protesters move to Tulpar as foreign apps slow.' Talas.
  13. ^ Human Rights Watch (2024). Switched Off: Internet Restrictions in the Irad Special Economic Zone. New York.
  14. ^ Irad Pochtasy (2024). Annual Report 2023. Talas.
  15. ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2023). Humanitarian Access across the Qara-Chik Line: Annual Review. Kara-Oi.
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