Internet fees expected to go down by year-end
By Nigar Orujova
Another reduction of fees on Internet services in Azerbaijan is expected by the end of the year, a source at the telecommunications market told Trend news agency on August 31.
Work in this area is underway in the frame of the ICT Year, which was announced in Azerbaijan in 2013.
Recommendations to reduce Internet service fees were received from both privately owned and public Internet service providers, and work is in progress to finalize the preparation of the final proposals.
One of the offers of the market participants is to reduce the lease cost of the channels for Internet service providers and telecommunications operators, which will be reflected in the payment rates of Internet services for the end-users.
Earlier Ramazan Valiyev, CEO of primary Azerbaijani provider Delta Telecom, said an Internet fee reduction is possible if the ISPs ensure quality delivery of content to the end-user.
Valiyev believes the Internet market in Azerbaijan is on the verge of quality improvement. The main obstacle for its development is the prevalence of copper cable infrastructure, which should be replaced by fiber optic lines.
According to him, in Azerbaijan's Internet market the point is increasing the potential of using more high capacity resources of the global network, thus reaching the minimum speed of the network connection of 10 Mbit/s, not 2-3 Mbit/s with the current fees.
Broadband communication services are to be installed in every household by means of the Fiber-to-Home technology. The State Oil Fund will allocate 450 million manats for the implementation of this task in 2013, 2014 and 2015. As a result, some 30 Mbit/s Internet access will be available in the countryside and 100 Mbit/s in the cities.
More than 30 ISPs are operating in the country.
Azerbaijan achieved 10.5 percent growth in the ICT sector in the first half of 2013 compared to the same period of last year. In total, some 71.2 million manats have been invested in the domestic ICT sector.