Central Asia as a new territory for digital infrastructure

Connection timelines for new data centers to the power grid in FLAPD (the largest commercial data center hubs in Europe: Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin) are now sliding past 2030, note experts at real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle in their H1 2026 report.

A direct consequence has been rising prices for powered land in FLAPD: compared to 2021, prices have climbed 82 percent, reaching €2.26 million per megawatt.

The resource shortage is already affecting supply. In Frankfurt, the data center vacancy rate fell to 4.6 percent by the end of Q2 2026, the lowest in FLAPD. The market has essentially moved to a pre-leasing model, with capacity largely spoken for before construction even begins: according to a report by CBRE, roughly 77 percent of data center capacity brought online since the start of 2026 had already been booked in prior years under pre-lease agreements (pre-lets), up 10 percentage points from 2025.

Against this backdrop, European cities and regions outside the “big five” accounted for a record 55 percent of all new data center leasing take-up. Demand is spilling over into other European markets considered secondary and tertiary by the industry: Groningen (Netherlands), Brussels (Belgium), Barcelona (Spain), and Norway. These new locations are drawing operators with accessible, relatively cheap electricity.

What’s happening in Europe is just one piece of a much larger shift. As power capacity grows scarcer in the traditional IT strongholds of the US, China, and the FLAPD hub, more and more data centers will emerge in new locations. Until recently, the Middle East looked like the leading alternative, drawing interest with its vast energy reserves, but amid the latest conflict, many projects there have now been put on hold.

Central Asia could be the next alternative. Here, the main prospects center on Kazakhstan, the region’s largest economy and a country with abundant energy resources. Having announced plans to build a digital hub encompassing data transit, cloud services, and computing capacity, Kazakh authorities have over the past two years adopted several strategic documents shaping national policy in this area: the Concept for the Development of Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Qazaqstan Strategy, and the Digital Code.

Alongside this legislative groundwork, the government is also involved in major infrastructure projects meant to build a solid foundation for the digital hub. One key project is the laying of a trans-Caspian fiber-optic line with capacity of up to 400 Tbit/s, connecting Kazakhstan’s infrastructure to Azerbaijan’s networks and, from there, to European markets, while the privately backed “West-East” hyper-highway will extend this corridor on to China.

“The subsea fiber-optic line creates an additional international data transmission route between Europe and Asia, strengthens the resilience of international telecommunications links, and supports Kazakhstan’s development as a digital transit hub,” notes Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development. The ministry stresses that the data security of foreign companies is ensured through a combination of legislative, organizational, and technical measures.

In the emerging digital hub, large, high-reliability data centers serve as key connection points. They are turning Kazakhstan from a passive transit zone into an active computing hub.

For international cloud providers, simply having a cable between Europe and Asia isn’t enough; they need a reliable landing point where this massive flow of data can be processed with minimal latency. That role is expected to be filled by the Akashi Data Center, currently under construction in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, with a declared capacity of 100 MW. After reviewing the facility’s design documentation, the Uptime Institute awarded it Tier IV certification.

“For the Akashi site, the key advantage isn’t a single guaranteed latency figure, but the presence of multiple independent carriers, multiple diverse/redundant fiber entry points, and access to alternative international routes. This lets cloud service operators and hyperscalers optimize latency, network resilience, and routing for their specific needs,” says Vladislav Minkevich, CEO of Akashi.

“For international cloud providers, this combination of Tier IV-level infrastructure, access to large-scale power capacity, and diversified international connectivity creates the conditions needed to serve Central Asian users from local infrastructure within the region, removing the need to route traffic through distant hubs such as Frankfurt or Singapore,” he adds.

Discover the Akashi Data Center and its vision for digital infrastructure in Central Asia at https://akashi.cloud