DUSHANBE, February 19, 2016, Asia-Plus — The landlocked countries in Central and South Asia have experienced important advances in improving their mobile telecommunications infrastructure.  However, access to high speed Internet is still limited and costly for individuals and businesses, mostly because much of global Internet traffic bypasses this region.

The World Bank notes that at present, countries across Central and South Asia together with the World Bank are initiating several projects that will help accelerate the pace of development in the region.

The Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan Governments together with the World Bank ICT Team are developing a Digital CASA project, which aims to implement a regional cross-border approach to improve broadband internet connectivity in the landlocked countries of Central Asia and parts of South Asia by catalyzing the private sector investment in infrastructure, and modernizing relevant policies and regulatory frameworks so as to use synergy between telecom, energy, and transport infrastructure.

At the regional level, the Project aims to connect the countries to a higher capacity pan-regional and intercontinental infrastructure, thus enabling the facilitation of the cross-border cooperation and the opportunity to act as the Europe-to-Asia transit hub for international connectivity.

At the national level, the project will bring reliable and affordable Internet services to the citizens, link small and medium enterprises and workers to the global digital economy, and foster innovations in public services.

The Government of Kazakhstan is reportedly exploring opportunities of joining the Digital CASA project.