BAKU (AzerNews) – Turkmenistan will construct the Turkmenbashi-Baku fibre-optic line through the Caspian Sea. The laying of a new line will increase the speed of Internet stream. It will upgrade the fiber-backbone directions, including European and Asian countries.

According to the contracts signed by the Turkmen Ministry of Communications, there are some connections to the fibre-optic communication systems in the direction of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Currently, Turkmenistan’s telecommunications services are considered to be the least developed of all the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries. Overall, the telecom market in this predominantly rural country is relatively small but has been trying boldly to expand in recent years. Turkmenistan plans to launch its first national satellite this year.

Turkmenistan gained access to the Internet in 1997 through a contract with MCI Communications (later became MCI WorldCom). A small number of independent Internet Service Providers were forced out of business in 2001 when TurkmenTelecom was granted a monopoly over data services. Dependence on expensive satellite channels limited the availability of Internet to only two thousand subscribers. To upgrade the Internet backbone, Ministry of Communication signed a contract with Tata Communications for routing traffic through Transit-Asia-Europe fibre optic channel. As a result of this development, Turkmen Telecom started offering an access to the higher speed Internet with ADSL to the consumers in Ashgabat.