Kazakhstan’s role in developing internet resilience in Central Asia

In short

• Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia depend heavily on Internet connectivity from Russia.
• The region can reduce its dependency on Russia by satellite and subsea cable connectivity via Europe.
• Internet shutdowns and other forms of content control by the Kazakh government reduce the reliability and resilience of the Internet.

A new Internet Society report shows that Kazakhstan is taking steps to reduce dependencies and improve its and Central Asia’s Internet resilience.

However, the country’s long-held dependence on Russia for international Internet connectivity and content, combined with its government’s history of implementing deliberate Internet disruption, are impeding it and the region’s further development.

Read the Report: Kazakhstan Internet Landscape: Understanding Threats and Opportunities

Overcoming Landlocked Connectivity Challenges

Kazakhstan, like its Central Asian neighbours, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, is one of 44 landlocked countries globally that rely on terrestrial fiber cables to connect them to neighbouring countries that have subsea landing stations. Subsea fiber cables form the backbone of the Internet, carrying around 95% of intercontinental Internet traffic.

The region’s backbone terrestrial fiber infrastructure is highly interconnected with Russia’s networks via several fiber border crossings between Russia and Kazakhstan. This means that the estimated 95% of international Internet traffic between Kazakhstan and Russia is similar to the ratio of international traffic that goes from and to Central Asia.

Although this infrastructure is robust, recent geopolitical tensions have caused concerns in Central Asia about whether Russia may use existing dependencies to limit connectivity deliberately. This has led national and regional decision-makers to invest in low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites as complementary connectivity options and push forward long-proposed fiber routes to Europe under the Caspian Sea.

All of these options, though, have their limitations. 

• LEO satellite connectivity is still in its infancy, is considerably more expensive than fiber, and is only seen as a viable connectivity option for rural areas.
• Fiber connections to Europe via the Caspian Sea are expensive and require political coordination. In recent years, subsea cables have also become increasingly subject to disruption and could become a target. 
• The neighbouring Asian countries surrounding Central Asia (Afghanistan, China, Iran, and Pakistan) have either more expensive and less robust connectivity or are government-controlled. This limits Kazakhstan’s choice to extend terrestrial cables. 

While these issues play out, the report provides several low-hanging solutions to improve Internet resilience in Kazakhstan that can also be applied to other Central Asian countries. These include:

• Encouraging the development of open, market-driven Internet Exchanges instead of government-led ones. A more robust local Internet ecosystem will reduce dependency on international connectivity.
• Limiting the barriers to entry for smaller ISPs, such as taxes on IT equipment, access to spectrum, and operator licenses, would improve market competition.
• Developing the data center market and investing in carrier-neutral data centers to attract international and local cloud and hosting providers, making the local content hosting scene more attractive. Kazakhstan has one of the highest levels of content localization within the region (Figure x). However, Russia is the first foreign destination for Kazakh website hosting, followed by Europe and the U.S.

Preventing Internet Shutdowns and State Control Over Content

Another limiting factor affecting Kazakhstan and the region’s Internet resilience is the Kazakhstan government’s recent history of deliberately disrupting and controlling Internet use and connectivity.

In 2019, the Internet Society issued a statement in reaction to news that the government of Kazakhstan was coercing Kazakh Internet users to download government-issued root certificates on their mobile and desktop devices. At the time, we emphasized that requiring Internet users to install root certificates that belong to the government could allow the government to intercept encrypted HTTPS traffic, breaking secure communication.

In January 2022, following political unrest in the country, authorities in Kazakhstan ordered Internet services to be suspended. Access was briefly and partly restored for a few hours each day before being cut again. The lives of Kazakh citizens were severely disrupted as the outage affected critical systems such as banks and mobile payment systems. 

These actions stem from:

• Amendments to communication laws between 2014 and 2016 that facilitated the creation of government root certificates and allowed the Prosecutor General’s Office to cut the Internet without a court decision
• A 2018 decree allowed the National Security Committee, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Prosecutor’s General Office access to ISPs’ networks and enforce a network shutdown in an emergency.

Further, the hyper-centralized structure of the Kazakh network and its restricted number of network operators make it easier for the Internet to be shut down.

The report recommends that Kazakhstan’s government remove obligations requiring ISPs to route traffic through the Unified Gateway to Internet Access, which acts as a centralized control mechanism. Instead, Kazakhstan should adopt policies that support an open and globally connected Internet, ensuring that businesses, media, and civil society can operate without disruptions.

Read the Report: Kazakhstan Internet Landscape: Understanding Threats and Opportunities.

This report was made possible through a grant from CAPS Unlock.