Russia has built a high-speed highway from Europe to Asia
Translated with AI assistance
Rostelecom has launched the Trans-Eurasian fiber-optic line TEA NEXT – «Transit Europe – Asia of the New Generation». The new trunk line runs through Russia with access points to the borders of Mongolia and China, and is designed to transmit massive volumes of data between Europe and Asia with minimal signal latency.
Construction of the project began in 2020. Its already launched section connects western Russia with Kyakhta on the border with Mongolia; the route includes St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and other major cities. The next stage is extending the line to Vladivostok, followed by connection to foreign infrastructure and submarine lines in Asia. The project’s website also lists a planned submarine line Nakhodka – Busan.
The main advantages of TEA NEXT are speed and capacity. On the Moscow–Kyakhta section, a signal makes a round trip in no more than 65 milliseconds, which, according to Rostelecom, is at least twice as fast as many submarine routes. Depending on the equipment used, the line’s potential throughput can reach 384 Tbps, 768 Tbps, and over 1 Pbps. For comparison, the maximum capacity of the PEACE submarine cable between Singapore and Marseille is about 96 Tbps, while that of the SeaMeWe-6 cable currently under construction is 136 Tbps.
The trunk line includes 96 so-called dark fibers – unused optical lines that operators can lease and equip with their own hardware. This gives major telecom companies and digital platforms the opportunity to independently build channels of the required capacity. Russian operators have already signed the first contracts; according to Rostelecom, companies from China, Mongolia, and CIS countries are also showing interest.
TEA NEXT is important not only as a transit line. It is being built to meet the rapidly growing demand from data centers, cloud services, artificial intelligence, and major digital platforms – industries for which high data transmission speeds, large network capacity, and low latency are all critical at the same time.
What this means for businesses in BRICS countries
For the BRICS countries, the emergence of such a route means yet another independent overland data transmission channel between Europe and Asia. First and foremost, it is of interest to China, India, and other Asian markets, where data centers, cloud computing, and AI are growing rapidly. For operators and technology companies, this is a new option for traffic transit that is less dependent on traditional submarine cables and capable of reducing latency between European and Asian digital hubs.
In essence, TEA NEXT transforms Russia’s geographical location into digital infrastructure: while the historic Silk Road transported goods between Europe and Asia, this new route is designed for what is becoming an equally valuable resource in the global economy — data.
