Meeting on Construction of Caspian Underwater TAE Segment Postponed

Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend S.Babayeva / A meeting of the communication administrations of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan to be held in Baku to discuss the project on the construction of the Caspian Underwater Segment of the Optical Cable Main - "Trans-Asia-Europe" (TAE) via Siyazan (Azerbaijan) - Aktau (Kazakhstan), which was originally scheduled for September, has been postponed, Mushvig Amirov, the spokesman for the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies, said. He said that the postponement of the meeting is not linked with Azerbaijan. The meeting is expected to take place at the end of this year, although a date has not yet been confirmed. Earlier during the delegation's visit of Azerbaijan's Communications Ministry to Latvia, a Memorandum was signed between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan and Kazakh KazTransCom. According to the Memorandum, the expenses will be covered equally by the parties. The cost of the cable constructed via the sea bed is approximately $7 - $10mln. The length of the TAE section between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan is 380km. At the present time the route runs via Turkmenistan and Iran, beyond the territory of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani Ministry believes that realization of the project will be a real phenomenon as the route will decrease by 2,000 km and will accelerate the traffic of information transmission.