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 this week, has been postponed due to busy schedules by Kazakh and Turkish sides, Jalil Jafarov, the head of the International Relations and Calculations Center of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said.
TAE will run via the route of Siyazan ( Azerbaijan) - Aktau ( Kazakhstan).
According to Jafarov, the meeting will be held in Baku by the end of the year and will adopt a detailed plan and protocol.
In November Azerbaijan proposed to hold a tender and develop a feasibility study within the framework of the project. The cost of the project on subsea cable construction is $10mln in accordance with the estimation made in 1999. The budget of the project is expected to increase. The final cost of the project will be defined during the tender.
A Memorandum was signed between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Azerbaijan and Kazakh KazTransCom. According to the Memorandum, the expenses will be covered by both parties equally.
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.