Telecom Informer

    

by The Prophet

Hello, and greetings from the Central Office!

Today I'm in the Turan neighborhood of Turkistan, Kazakhstan.  Why, might you ask?  It's a long story involving a Lada and a cat named Murka.  But let's back up to 2021, when I first intended to do this project, and ended up in Dubai a few months later instead.  There was a pandemic, borders were closed, and there were more projects in major cities than there was capacity.  These days, as the economy worsens in the United States, smaller international projects are finally back in the picture.

Turan Neighborhood - Turkistan, Kazakhstan

If you have never heard of Turkistan, it's in southern Kazakhstan along the Silk Road and about 300 kilometers north of Tashkent, Uzbekistan.  If you didn't know better, you'd think you were in eastern Washington because the terrain looks very similar.  It's an historically important place, with a famous mausoleum built in 1399.  And it's growing like crazy.  Starting around 2020, Turkistan built a giant shopping mall; airport terminal; modern supermarkets; a 3D flying theater; a new regional capital, parks, hotels, you name it.  The development happened at a speed and scale that I have really only seen elsewhere in Chinese cities, creating truly world class infrastructure out of the desert.  Although the development was a pet project of the former president of Kazakhstan and had a high risk of becoming a white elephant, the massive level of investment seems to have paid off.  Turkistan has a small but growing tourism industry, and the regional government relocated its offices there as well.  It has become a regional center of government, tourism, and commerce.

All of this means more people, more infrastructure, and more demand for bandwidth.  You might not exactly expect a place like Kazakhstan to be as wired as it is, but it's a society that highly values science and technology and is willing to invest in it.  After all, the space program of the former Soviet Union was centered there, and the Baikonur Cosmodrome space complex (leased by Russia and supporting the International Space Station) still operates.  Kazakhs are just as online as people in North America, or perhaps more so.

Turkistan, however, was starved for options until recently.  In neighborhoods with fixed line telephone service, Kazakhtelecom offered ADSL service for residential Internet.  Mobile carriers offered 3G and 4G service, with levels of quality ranging from terrible to just O.K.  The mobile carriers offered residential solutions via portable hotspot or USB modem plans, but with slow speeds, data caps, and questionably reliable service.  There is also a local satellite TV provider called OTAU TV, but unlike some U.S. providers, they don't provide satellite-based Internet services.

The landscape has quickly changed.  Wireless providers are now offering 5G, although the quality of residential service offerings still isn't great given that services are chronically oversubscribed.  Kazakhtelecom now offers fiber to the home in some areas, in addition to ADSL.  The ADSL service is only sold with a land line telephone included and operates at slower speeds.  Fiber to the home is sold at a promotional price of about $8 per month for 300 Mbps service, including a bundled streaming TV offering.

Most importantly, Kazakhtelecom probably has the most bizarre mobile app of any I have seen from a phone company (except, perhaps, Global YO).  Complete pricing and service information is only available if you download the mobile app, and the app includes a chat feature.  One chat has what appears to be 12-year-olds recording audio clips of themselves singing.  There are also chat channels full of lonely guys looking for love.  There is an entire section full of Kazakh music videos, and a payments app.  This appears to be in partnership with an app called Aitu, which states that it "does not process requests related to private chats" in the Illegal Content section.  Do with that information what you will.

Possibly the Most Baffling Phone Company App I Have Ever Seen

If you can manage to wade your way through the thicket of "Super App" offerings, Kazakhtelecom offers a tool to check whether service is available at your address.  However, the addresses they serve are limited and a significant portion of the city of Turkistan lacks service, including the Turan neighborhood.  This is a largely residential neighborhood, and because of that has been long overlooked by utility services.  Paved roads and a sewer system recently came to the neighborhood (although running water and electricity have been available for decades), and now fiber to the home is available through a company called DomaLine.

DomaLine is a local ISP with around 10,000 customers.  Their fiber infrastructure is aerial, riding on the same infrastructure as electrical connections.  Like the competition, they sell a streaming television package, offering 70 channels.  This is paired with 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 200 Mbps service offerings in a range from $12 to $20 per month.  The upstream provider is TTC, one of the larger backbone ISPs in Kazakhstan.  Overall it's a pretty reasonable setup, using brand new equipment.

At least, it would be a reasonable setup if not for a cat named Murka.  The nearest utility pole to today's installation address (formal addresses are a relatively new thing in the Turan neighborhood) is located across the street.  We need to do an aerial drop, and doing that requires throwing the cable onto the roof.  In this neighborhood, people have tin roofs, so we don't want to be throwing rocks.  Instead, we attach the cable to a small bag of sand, and toss it across to land on the roof.

Unfortunately, Murka is on the roof, the roof is very steep, and he thinks this is a game.  We toss the cable, and he knocks it down.  We toss it back up, and he knocks it down again.  This could go on all day.  Does anyone have any kitty treats?" I asked.  Someone offered a Thermos of tea.  "Kitties don't drink tea," I said with exasperation.

There was only one solution.  I found some string, one of the other guys found a feather, and we fashioned an irresistible toy.  "Murrrrrrka!" I said, slowly swinging the string in a way that was sure to attract his attention.  I then began dragging it across the yard, slowly then faster, and bringing the laser focus of a ferocious hunter.  We heard a clatter as he clambered off the roof, and in a tabby flash he violently attacked the string in a hail of teeth and claws.  "Now!" I said, and the crew threw the cable while I made a friend.  Another 100 Mbps of service was installed.

A Defiant Murka After Mischief

One of the things that I continue to observe is that countries which Americans would consider developing or mid-level developed are building newer infrastructure, in many ways leap-frogging what is available in so-called "developed" countries.  At my home in The Exclave, I can barely get 25 Mbps of service at over three times the cost.  Fiber to the home service tiers in Turkistan, Kazakhstan starts at double that speed.

And with that, it's time to pet Murka.  Take good care of your pets, and I'll see you again in the summer.