Azerbaijan to involve BSEC countries in TASIM

/By AzerNews/

By Aynur Jafarova

Azerbaijan plans to involve member states of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) in the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway (TASIM) project.

During Azerbaijan’s chairmanship at the BSEC committee on science and technology in 2014-2016, TASIM will be introduced to the BSEC participants, Foreign Ministry told Trend Agency.

The main purpose is to disseminate information about the project and the benefits it can give to the participants.

Meanwhile, proposals that reflect the interests of some countries will be prepared.

“As you know, five countries have already given their consent, which is sufficient for the project to be implemented,” the ministry said. “Regarding an increase of the number of participants of the project, it is quite possible. Today, there are already many countries which are interested in this project.”

Regarding the construction of an underwater segment of TASIM pipeline, the ministry said “this issue is still under discussion, which is mostly of a technical nature”.

The TASIM project envisions the creation of a major transit link from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. The line will connect the major centers of information exchange in Europe and Asia together, stretching through China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, and Germany. A reserve North transit line will traverse the territory of Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed on the establishment of the TASIM consortium during the 19th international BakuTel-2013 conference and exhibition in December.

In September 2013, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution supporting Azerbaijan's initiative on establishment of Eurasian Connectivity Alliance (EuraCA) and construction of TASIM.

TASIM will be implemented in two stages. The project is expected to come on stream at the cost of $100 million. The length of TASIM will be 11,000 kilometers and its initial network bandwidth will reach 2 Tbit/s.