Kardesa

Overview

Kardesa is a planned submarine cable system spanning approximately 1,385 kilometres across the Black Sea region. It connects four countries — Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, and Ukraine — forming a multi-country corridor across the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea basin. The system is scheduled to enter service in 2027.

Route and Landings

In Bulgaria, the cable lands at Aheloy, a coastal location on the western Black Sea shore.

In Georgia, the cable lands at Poti, a port city on the eastern Black Sea coast.

In Turkey, the landing point is Sile, situated on the northern coast near the entrance to the Bosphorus.

In Ukraine, the cable lands at Odessa, one of the country's principal coastal cities on the northwestern Black Sea.

Ownership and Operators

Kardesa is jointly owned by Neqsol Holding and Vodafone. Neqsol Holding is an Azerbaijani diversified investment group with interests across telecommunications and technology infrastructure. Vodafone is a multinational telecommunications operator with a broad European and international network footprint.

Status and Timeline

Kardesa is planned for a Ready for Service date in 2027. The system is not yet in service and is currently in the pre-deployment phase.

Regional Context

The Black Sea corridor served by Kardesa already hosts several existing submarine cable systems. The Caucasus Cable System, which also connects Bulgaria and Georgia and stretches 1,200 kilometres, has been operational since 2008. KAFOS links Bulgaria and Turkey and has been in service since 1997. Earlier systems such as Turcyos-1 and Turcyos-2 serve domestic Turkish routes, while Georgia-Russia and the MedNautilus Submarine System address other segments of the broader regional network. Kardesa extends beyond these predecessors by combining four distinct country landings — Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, and Ukraine — within a single system of 1,385 kilometres.

Measured round-trip latency through the cable averages 94.0 milliseconds, based on 31 ping tests conducted over the past 60 days, with a best recorded result of 5.5 milliseconds.

Strategic Role

By linking Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, and Ukraine across the Black Sea, Kardesa will provide direct submarine connectivity between the European Union's eastern edge, the South Caucasus, and the northwestern Black Sea coast. The four-country landing configuration makes it one of the more geographically distributed systems in this corridor when compared to the two-country reach of earlier regional cables. Once operational, it will offer an additional path for data traffic traversing the Black Sea basin, complementing the existing infrastructure that has served this region since the late 1990s.