Innovation and new technologies

Innovative technologies play an important role in achieving the Company’s strategic goals, as they have a direct impact on their implementation. The implementation of innovative projects and digital transformation contribute to improving management efficiency, minimizing risks, promoting ESG principles and achieving the SDGs.

1. Kazakhtelecom JSC completed the upgrade of the external border of MDN and organized PoP-nodes in Frankfurt and Hong Kong.
   
   Modernization of the border router (ASBR) in the city of Almaty was carried out, earlier this process was launched in Astana and Aktobe.
   
   Own PoP-nodes were deployed in Frankfurt and Hong Kong, which allowed direct connections with major content companies, such as Google, Facebook/Meta, Steam Valve, Amazon, Tencent, Twitch, Microsoft, and Apple. Connections have also been established with Tire-1 operators such as Lumen and PCCW. These infrastructure changes allow Kazakhtelecom JSC to provide higher speed access to content for its customers and improve the quality of services provided.
   
   
2. Core routers of the second plane network core were upgraded (one PTX router each in the cities of Astana, Almaty and Aktobe).
   
   
3. The service border routers were expanded by additional 100G ports to connect operators in the cities of Almaty, Astana, Karagandy, Shymkent, Aktobe, Taraz.
   
   Backbone channels of broadband (BNG) routers in the cities of Kokshetau, Oskemen, Aktobe and Atyrau were transferred to 100G.

Currently, 34 thousand video cameras are installed in 17 cities of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the platform of Kazakhtelecom JSC. Video cameras are installed at the entrances and inside entrances of apartment buildings.

Successful work on the development of new customer video surveillance projects was carried out. The topic of public safety continues to be relevant where the video surveillance system is implemented not at the level of private companies, but at the level of the city, creating a powerful tool for operational monitoring of the work of various city services. These systems allow you to monitor the situation in public places and control the work of city services involved in snow removal, garbage collection, etc.

Today, urban video surveillance systems are an integral priority component of the ecosystem of a smart city, striving to be as safe and comfortable as possible for its residents. For example, the city of Astana has implemented projects to install video surveillance systems in public places at 118 sites.

Healthcare facilities in Astana are equipped with cameras that are connected to a cloud video surveillance platform with additional redundancy on local video servers at each facility.

Having access to the video surveillance cameras of the facilities, the Health Administration now has the ability to quickly monitor the situation at health facilities, which leads to improved safety for visitors.

These projects demonstrate the Company’s capabilities in implementing large-scale urban video surveillance projects and are successful cases for further replication in other regions of the country, since for state customers one of the important triggers for decision-making is the availability of implemented cases in the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In 2022, work with content providers was continued. According to the results of the year, the Company expanded local content providers’ cache servers with such companies as Google, Facebook, Cloudflare, Akamai, Yandex, Netflix, Steam, etc. In total, 67% of Internet traffic on Kazakhtelecom’s network is localized.

These cache servers allow the Company to localize traffic of popular content providers closer to end users, which increases the speed and quality of access to content. By increasing the volume of cache-servers, the Company improved the quality of services provided and increased satisfaction of its customers.

Kazakhtelecom JSC, as an operator with a reliable and large network infrastructure, together with RIPE NCC, which is responsible for K-root root server, deployed a network in Tier III data center of Pavlodar city “mirror” K-root DNS-server. Thus, the K-root server at Kazakhtelecom’s site became part of the global network responsible for Internet traffic. The average daily meeting is about 20 million DNS presences.

The current location of K-root servers can be viewed at the RIPE NCC website https://ripe.net/analyse/dns/k-root.

In 2022, Kazakhtelecom JSC conducted several successful tests on the Telco Cloud node. These tests were conducted to verify the virtualization and disaggregation of various network functions.

The list of tests conducted are:

1. vDNS — corporate DNS for B2C subscribers.
2. vSBC — session controller for fixed telephony subscribers.
3. VOLTHA — OLT and ONT based on open architecture and Open OMCI protocol.
4. vSIEM — SIEM system for IS events correlation.
5. Open RAN — BS based on open architecture.

This experience will allow introducing these solutions on Kazakhtelecom JSC’s network in the near future. For example, such solution as virtual Session Border Controller (vSBC) — session border controller — equipment (software or hardware), which is part of operators’ NGN networks. Session border controllers perform a number of functions, necessary for successful and secure functioning of the operator’s network:

1. Hiding the internal network topology.
2. Separating trusted (internal) and untrusted (external) networks on different physical network interfaces (physical layer network separation).
3. Protection of networks against hacking, DoS/DDoS VoIP attacks, possibility to set arbitrary rules of traffic analysis and checking.
4. Dynamic/static blacklists/whitelists and access lists.
5. Manipulation of SIP headers, manipulation with SDP.
6. SIP normalization.
7. Providing work of subscribers behind NAT (NAT Traversal).
8. Compatibility with any third-party solutions.
9. Interoperability with networks having a joint with SS7 (SIP-I/SIP-T support).
10. Transcoding, etc.