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Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan to discuss Trans-Asia-Europe cable across Caspian seabed

03 October 2008 15:17 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev - APA. On November 11, Turkmenistan will send a delegation to Azerbaijan for the next round of discussions on the proposed construction of a segment of the Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) fiber-optic cable line across the Caspian Sea, said Iltimas Mammadov, Azerbaijanâ€™s Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technologies.
He added that several rounds of discussions have been held with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on the project.
â€œIf we reach agreement, the fiber-optic cable line will fork out to both Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan,â€ he added.
The TAE project envisions a 16,800-mile telecommunications line through 20 countries, from Frankfurt am Main in Germany to Shanghai in China. The TAE fiber optic line is designed to transmit voice, data, fax and video information.
Azerbaijanâ€™s and Kazakhstan have signed a protocol for construction of the Caspian segment.
By calculations in 1999, the cost of the project to lay the cable on the sea bottom between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan was about $10 million but the cost may change after recalculations.
The route includes cable lines Baku (Azerbaijan)-Astara (Iran) 345km, Baku-Russia 250km and Siyazan (Azerbaijan)-Aktau (Kazakhstan) 400km.