Stuart Evers, Chairman of Azertelecom International, and Natalie Bannerman discussed the Digital Silk Road project, a large-scale Asia-Europe route consisting of land and subsea infrastructure.

At the 2021 European Capacity Conference, a panel meeting on the Caucasus and Central Asia revealed that Azerbaijan-based telecommunications company Azertelecom International plans to build two new submarine cable projects in the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea as the company's digital silk road project a part of.

Stuart Evers, chairman of Azertelecom International, said that the cable across the Caspian Sea is only 350 kilometers, so it is a non-relay system.

"We are using railways to build a brand new 48-pair fiber optic system across Azerbaijan. The RFP has been released for this and we are currently selecting suppliers. We are looking forward to the final confirmation in early 2023; the Caspian cable will also be in 2023."

As for the project across the Black Sea, Evers said: “Only more than 93 pairs of optical fibers pass through oil and gas pipelines. We will install active equipment for them in 2022, so it will be ready for 2023. We actually A new submarine cable system is being built in the Black Sea. This is a consortium led by our colleagues at Vodafone, and we believe this may be ready around 2024."

Ultimately, the initiative aims to create a modern fiber optic infrastructure network that connects Europe with Central and South Asian markets through Georgia and Azerbaijan. Therefore, in addition to the aforementioned submarine cables, the project will also include a new optical fiber system across Azerbaijan.

According to Evers, two new submarine cables created the fastest path to support this new network.

"The drive doesn't actually revolve around the submarine cable itself; the drivers are going to build this digital Silk Road-this new route between Asia and Europe-and the submarine cable happens to be part of it," he explained.

"Our goal is to have the newest, first-class, best-quality and shortest route between Asia and Europe-obviously to do this, we need to cross some waters, the Caspian Sea is the first. We do have some to Europe Choose land, but one of the fastest ways is to cross the Black Sea."

Evers said that establishing the shortest possible route between the two continents would provide a lot of technological advancement. This will also make it commercially successful. From the perspective of Chinese customers-some of the biggest traffic generators on this route-this new route will create a much-needed middle route, as well as some route diversity.

"Their northern route passes through Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia. They have a southern route using sea cables from Hong Kong and Singapore, bypassing India, to the Gulf, and then through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and into Europe," Evers said .

"This is much longer geographically, so our route will provide this middle route, a central corridor, and we believe this is something in huge demand."

Evers said that the project's plan is to focus only on terrestrial fiber and subsea to establish direct links. Due to the "increasing demand" and the connectivity it will provide, the system is good for infrastructure such as satellite base stations.

Although the cable configuration has not yet been finalized, both systems will have "multiple pairs of fibers over the entire length." Therefore, it will be 24 pairs of fibers, 48 ​​pairs of fibers-some parts may even be more than that," Evers added.

Although Azertelecom is considering the use of space division multiplexing (SDM) for cables, Evers said this will be guided by their suppliers-because the system has not yet entered the request for proposals (RFP) stage.

"We have not yet entered the RFP; we have just completed the RFP document for the submarine cable system. So we will not specify the technology we need, we will only specify the cable routing and capacity we need-and then we will leave it to the supplier, Let them return to us what they think is the best solution for those special cable systems."

Evers added that the cable across the Caspian Sea will be very simple because it is a point-to-point between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The one in the Black Sea will be "a bit complicated" because it will be point-to-multipoint, so "there may also be subsea exchange technology."

As for the cable configuration, Azertelecom has so far specified the type of cable landing station it wants, and given the idea of ​​a specific location, "but whether we will land in the data center or the cable landing station has not yet been decided."

Unlike landing in Sardinia, Sicily, or southern France, which may be quite isolated, the two cables in the Digital Silk Road project will land as close as possible to Baku and as close as possible to Aktau, Kazakhstan.

"As a result, we are only a few kilometers away from the data center in Aktau," Evers added.

Throughout the project, Evers said, the plan was to connect and mesh all the different components.

"We want to control from a single network operations center (NOC) and treat them as a system. We need to be able to provide end-to-end services, but we also need to provide services within these modules, because not everyone wants from The full connection between the China border and Europe, and vice versa."

But Evers said that as long as there are ground components, they want to provide as many routes, diversity and loops as possible.

As a private company, the Digital Silk Road is a private system, “so it is not based on the government, and we are not associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and other similar projects,” Evers explained.

In other words, the system will be operator-neutral and available to anyone who wants to use it. "One of our ambitions is to open up the area," Evers added.

Paradoxically, from what Evers witnessed at Azertelecom, the impact of the pandemic has both positive and negative sides.

"On the positive side, I think we, like everyone else, have seen our complete reliance on digital connectivity as a modern society. We have seen people increasingly rely on digitalization. I think the pandemic has accelerated this understanding. , But it has also accelerated the demand for capacity."

One of the ways this affects the project-in addition to the motivation to build its infrastructure as soon as possible-is to take more measures when selecting capacity.

"If it is possible for us to choose a smaller number of fiber pairs instead of a larger number of fibers, we will choose a higher number of fibers because we believe that there is such a demand, and we do not want to be in such a situation in 10 or 15 years. Time is limited by capacity."

On the other hand, as an organization, he said that they cannot visit potential partners and suppliers, or even get together as a team. Coupled with the need to isolate some colleagues, etc., this means that Covid has caused some delays-just like almost every global project.

The company's affairs continue to evolve. In October, Azertelecom and its Kazakhstan counterpart Transtelecom signed a memorandum of understanding for the Trans-Caspian Optical Fiber (TCFO) project.

The submarine optical cable project will become a part of the Digital Silk Road, connecting Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan along the Caspian Sea seabed, with a total length of 400 kilometers. It is expected to transmit data with a capacity of 4Tbps to 6Tbps.

When signing the memorandum of understanding, Azertelecom Chairman Fuad Allahverdiyev commented: “We believe that, given the growth of global Internet consumption, this large-scale digital project will help the telecommunications industry in the region, as well as the expansion of business between countries and companies.

Looking to the future, Azertelecom has a very simple view of the roadmap for this project. In the next three to six months, it hopes to launch the Digital Silk Road project.

"Once we have completed this work, we will have an idea for the next step of development-this may involve additional submarine cable systems and additional ground systems. But our focus is to complete this east-west bridge."

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