Freedom Holding will invest over $230 million in telecom projects in Kazakhstan by the end of 2027
ASTANA. June 18 (Interfax) - Kazakh communications operator Freedom Telecom (recently created by the Freedom Holding Corp.) intends to invest 107 billion tenge (about $236 million at the current exchange rate) by the end of 2027 to implement two telecommunications projects in the country, Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Zhaslan Madiyev said.
These are the construction of a national West-East hyper-highway, which will increase transit traffic across the territory of Kazakhstan, and the creation of a data processing center of at least Tier III level for storing transit data and international traffic.
"A proposal was received from Freedom Telecom LLP for these two projects. Its own investments in the hyper-highway will total over 17 billion tenge through the end of 2025, and more than 90 billion tenge in the construction of the data center with an implementation period through the end of 2027," Madiyev said at a government meeting on Tuesday.
Freedom Telecom CEO Kairat Akhmetov said that the total length of the hyper-highway would be 3,100 km.
He also said that the data center would be located in the south of the country.
"The Super Data Center, (...) with its innovative solutions for artificial intelligence and data transmission and traffic transmission acting as an alternative segment of the Western Europe - Southeast Asia global transport network, (...) will be put into operation in December 2027. These private investments are entirely ours," Akhmetov said.
Freedom Holding Corp. is controlled by Kazakh businessman Timur Turlov. Freedom Holding's headquarters is in Almaty, while the company has representative offices in 14 countries. Freedom Holding placed $200 million in 5-year dollar bonds on AIX in December 2023 to create a new operator, Freedom Telecom.
The official exchange rate as of June 18 is 452.92 tenge/$1.