Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 20 / Trend H.Valiyev /
Georgia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine will join the project on the construction of the transnational superhighway (TASIM) in the near future, Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan Iltimas Mammadov said in an interview on the official website of the ruling New Azerbaijan party.
Mammadov said that five countries have joined the project so far, Azerbaijan, China, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey and are working on the creation of a consortium to implement the project.
According to a source close to the project, the next meeting of the TASIM project participants will be held in the first quarter of this year.
One of the main issues to be addressed in the upcoming meeting is the creation of a consortium for laying the Caspian segment of the cable.
The issue of preparation of a memorandum of understanding on the project which is quite a complex document also remains open.
It is assumed that the commissioning of TASIM will happen in the middle of the year. The main issue facing today's agenda is the joint Azeri-Kazakh construction of an optic cable under the Caspian Sea.
Overall, it is planned to build two main lines within the project, one of which will pass through the territory of Ukraine, the second through Turkey. Both lines will be independent and interchangeable. The operators of these countries will act as a link with major European operators.
The TASIM project is intended to connect a total of 20 countries. Its implementation will eliminate the 'information gap' between Western Europe and the Pacific Rim.