Azernews.Az

BAKU – The international telecommunications and ICT exhibition started in Baku on Tuesday with the participation of industry majors from around the world. President Ilham Aliyev toured the exhibition.

BakuTel, the 16th Azerbaijan International Telecommunications & Information Technologies Exhibition & Conference, brings together over 100 companies from 15 countries, including China, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Turkey, and the United States. Azerbaijani companies hold about 40 percent of the exposition area at the event, organized by Iteca Caspian, British ITE Group PLC’s partner in the South Caucasus region. The four-day exhibition features the latest ICT products and services provided in Azerbaijan and far beyond.

The exhibition is taking place under the "ICT and global climate change" motto, considering the significance of climate change challenges in the world and the Year of the Environment declared in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies, in cooperation with its partners, is presenting its projects, including People’s Computer, Regional Innovation Zone and the Trans-Eurasian Information Super Highway, which covers up to 20 countries in western Europe and eastern Asia.

The exhibition also has a section featuring Azerbaijan’s space industry achievements, namely, the project on launching Azerspace satellite into the orbit, which is drawing to a close.

Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, Ali Abbasov, told the opening of BakuTel 2010 that Azerbaijan’s ICT sector is experiencing a stage of dynamic growth. Half of the country’s population now has Internet access, and 12 percent of the users have broadband Internet.

"At the same time, we continue working to fully apply digital television and conventional TV broadcasting will be replaced with it as early as in 2012 -- three years earlier than the deadline set for all countries by the International Telecommunication Union."

An ITU official said Azerbaijan has made a number of accomplishments in the ICT sector in the past ten years. He welcomed that the number of cellular communication users in the country of 9 million people reached 7 million as of early 2010.