Innovation
AzerTelecom and DE-CIX to Launch AZE-IX, Baku's Neutral Exchange
September 20, 2026
3
Min
AzerTelecom and DE-CIX have entered a strategic partnership to launch AZE-IX, a new neutral internet exchange in Azerbaijan, in a deal that marks the German operator's first step into Western and Central Asia.
AzerTelecom is the international backbone operator within Azerconnect Group, part of NEQSOL Holding. DE-CIX operates internet exchanges in more than 60 markets across North and South America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South, East and Southeast Asia, and is accessible from data centres in over 600 cities.
Keeping Azerbaijani traffic in Azerbaijan
AZE-IX will act as a neutral platform for local and international networks, content providers, cloud service providers and enterprises. By allowing internet traffic to be exchanged inside Azerbaijan rather than routed abroad, the platform is designed to cut latency and improve the performance and resilience of backbone networks.
That is the core economics of an internet exchange: traffic between two networks that both have a presence in Baku no longer needs to travel to Frankfurt or Istanbul and back. The effect is lower transit costs for local operators, better performance for local users, and a domestic internet that continues to function if an international route fails.
A digital corridor between Europe and Asia
The launch is positioned as a milestone in NEQSOL Holding's Digital Silk Way project, a transcontinental initiative to build a new digital corridor between Europe and Asia, including a fibre link across the Caspian Sea.
"Digital infrastructure is becoming as fundamental to economic competitiveness as transport and energy infrastructure," said Kirill Rubinski, CEO of NEQSOL Holding. "Through AzerTelecom's partnership with DE-CIX, we are bringing world-class interconnection capabilities to Azerbaijan, enabling data to move faster, more securely and more efficiently. AZE-IX is fully aligned with NEQSOL Holding's strategy of investing in scalable infrastructure, developing international partnerships and strengthening Azerbaijan's role as a digital bridge between Europe, Asia and the Middle East."
DE-CIX chief executive Ivo Ivanov framed the geography as the deciding factor. "DE-CIX has spent more than three decades building neutral interconnection ecosystems globally that help regions close gaps in digital access and capability," he said. "Azerbaijan's position at the crossroads of the Caspian, Black Sea and Central Asian corridors makes it a natural location for a new connectivity hub."
The commercial logic
Azerbaijan has spent a decade arguing that it should be a transit country for data on the same terms it is for oil, gas and freight. The Middle Corridor moves containers; Digital Silk Way is the attempt to move packets along the same axis. An exchange point is the piece that converts raw transit capacity into a market, because it gives content and cloud providers a reason to place infrastructure in Baku rather than merely pass through it.
The partners say AZE-IX will be developed using DE-CIX's established interconnection model and will integrate Azerbaijan more closely into the global exchange ecosystem, creating new interconnection opportunities for regional and international networks.
Neither company disclosed investment figures, a launch date or initial capacity. For NEQSOL Holding — a group active in energy, telecommunications, high technology, construction and mining across 11 countries, serving more than 25 million customers with over 20,000 employees — the initiative reflects a broader pattern of investing in telecommunications infrastructure and building international partnerships in the markets where it operates.
The test will be adoption. An exchange creates value only in proportion to the number and quality of networks that connect to it, and the operators have not yet named launch participants.
