Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev last month announced an ambitious plan to transform his country into a “fully digital nation” and regional digital hub. In some respects, Kazakhstan has already made remarkable progress toward these goals, with an Internet-penetration rate of about 93 percent — comparable to Germany’s. However, despite its relatively well-developed infrastructure, Kazakhstan has strategic dependencies and vulnerabilities that could limit its digital ambitions.
Kazakhstan’s Internet ecosystem reflects its position as Central Asia’s leading economy. As a new Internet Society report shows, the country operates 212 autonomous systems, more than twice as many as more populous Uzbekistan, and has been allocated about 3.2 million Internet protocol version four addresses — millions more than any other Central Asian country.
Two major telecommunications groups dominate the landscape. State-owned Kazakhtelecom serves about 38 percent of users, while VEON Group controls another significant portion through Beeline and TNS-Plus. The duopoly has enabled rapid deployment of infrastructure, but concentrated ownership limits innovation.
Likewise, the government operates a monopoly over international traffic through the state-managed Kazakhstan Internet Exchange, also known as KAZ-GOV-IX, which handles more than 350 gigabits per second of traffic in 18 cities. While operational efficiency is high, competition — an essential ingredient of a successful digital economy — is not.
Moreover, Kazakhstan is dependent on Russian Internet infrastructure — a legacy of Soviet planning. The country has 17 fiber-optic connections with Russia (laid along historic railway lines), compared with just two with China and five with its other neighbors.
Moreover, despite direct connections to global providers in Frankfurt and Hong Kong, most Kazakh Internet service providers (ISPs) rely on Russian providers such as Rostelecom and TransTeleCom. Owing to these factors, as well as consumer demand for Russian-language content, an estimated 95 percent of Kazakhstan’s international Internet traffic flows through Russia.
That dependency creates many vulnerabilities. When major US providers Cogent and Lumen stopped serving Russian ISPs following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Central Asian Internet users faced potential network degradation, underscoring how geopolitical tensions can threaten digital connectivity.
More worryingly, Russia’s efforts to territorialize the “Russian segment of the Internet,” which involves expanding the government’s authority to block and regulate online content, could affect Kazakhs’ access to Russian-language Web sites.
For example, Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, and leading social-media platform VKontakte have built a strong presence in Kazakhstan.
Recognizing these vulnerabilities, the Kazakh government launched the US$1.1 billion “Accessible Internet” project, which aims to upgrade infrastructure and develop international transit capabilities. Its centerpiece is the Trans-Caspian Fiber-Optic Cable Project, scheduled for completion by the end of this year. By connecting Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, the “Digital Silk Way” would provide an alternative route to Europe via Georgia and Turkey that bypasses Russian and Chinese networks. In the long run, the data corridor would also allow Kazak ISPs to extract transit revenue from traffic between Europe and Asia.
Another diversification strategy is to route more traffic through China Telecom’s Transit Silk Road, which connects Frankfurt to Hong Kong. However, that risks swapping one dependency for another, because it would subject Kazakh data to Chinese filtering and surveillance systems.
A third alternative is satellite Internet. While the government has collaborated with Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb on projects to improve rural connectivity, it has criminalized the use of the services by private citizens. At issue is Kazakhstan’s regulations regarding content-monitoring compliance, which require telecoms to work closely with authorities to filter and block content.
The government in the past few years has shut down Internet access multiple times on national security grounds. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to force international satellite providers such as Starlink to comply with such orders.
Ultimately, the Kazakh government’s desire for control might be its biggest barrier to digital progress. Prioritizing state oversight over market efficiency undermines competitiveness. For example, the January 2022 Internet shutdown, in response to widespread civil unrest, damaged Kazakhstan’s reputation as a reliable digital partner.
The government’s efforts to bypass encryption protocol have had a similar effect. The authorities have repeatedly pressured citizens to install root certificates enabling state surveillance of supposedly secure Internet traffic. The major browsers have blocked the use of such certificates, leading to error messages that degrade user experience.
Maintaining a tight grip on the digital realm has other downsides. Restrictions on foreign ownership discourage international investment, while government control of Internet exchange points prevents the development of neutral interconnection facilities.
Kazakhstan’s digital future depends on whether the government loosens its regulatory hold on the Internet. Digital hubs must offer openness, predictability and technical neutrality — characteristics that conflict with authoritarian rule. With its late entry into the digital race, Kazakhstan must demonstrate exceptional execution to overtake Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia, which are similarly vying to become regional hubs, and to compete with Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, which offer more established and attractive frameworks.
Kazakhstan’s experience offers lessons for middle powers navigating digital transformation in an increasingly fragmented world. Technical infrastructure, while important, cannot overcome political and regulatory constraints that impede efforts to build trust with ISPs and users. True digital independence requires embracing the Internet’s core values: openness and competition.
Nowmay Opalinski is head of Asian affairs at Cassini, a Paris-based consultancy, and a research fellow at the French Institute of Geopolitics, focusing on the Geopolitics of the Datasphere project. Romain Fontugne is deputy director of the Internet Initiative Japan.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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