Fiber optic cable to be laid with TANAP pipes

An 800-kilometer-long fiber optic cable will be put into the strip dug up for the construction of the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) project that will span from the Georgian border east of Turkey to the Greek border west of Turkey.

TANAP will carry the Azeri gas to be extracted from the Shah Deniz-2 gas field to Europe through Turkey and will also be used as communication infrastructure.

The digging was done by Fiber Optik A.Ş. of SOCAR Turkey, the Turkish branch of the Azeri energy giant State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). The infrastructural services to be constructed on this strategic line will offer additional capacity and line backup to operators and other telecommunications companies operating in the region and world.

The SOCAR Fiber Network will start from Ardahan, a Turkish city located on the Georgian border, and will end in Edirne on the Greek border west of Turkey. The network will pass through 20 cities - Ardahan, Kars, Erzurum, Erzincan, Bayburt, Gümüşhane, Giresun, Sivas, Yozgat, Kırşehir, Kırıkkale, Ankara, Eskişehir, Bilecik, Kütahya, Bursa, Balıkesir, Çanakkale, Tekirdağ and Edirne - and 67 provinces. It is expected that the line will be connected through Istanbul.

SOCAR Turkey, which operates in the energy and petroleum chemicals sectors, decided to invest in the fiber optic infrastructure starting from Turkey after it took into consideration the global potential of the telecommunications industry. To this end, it was founded by SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.Ş. on May 8, 2013.

On July 22, 2014, the company obtained an infrastructure management services license from the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) with the objective of offering backbone network services regarding all kinds of electronic communication to operators. The company also aims to allow operators to have quicker access to Internet through making investments in fiber optic infrastructure.