Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

The Azerbaijani capital Baku will host this year's internet governance forum within the international telecommunications exhibition BakuTel-2012 from November 6-9. The forum is expected to bring together more than 1,500 people from over 100 countries, including representatives of government agencies, the private sector, civil society, and international organizations.

The proposed main theme of the Seventh Annual Internet Governance Forum Meeting (IGF) is "Internet Governance for Sustainable Human, Economic and Social Development".

"Holding this forum in Baku, first of all, is seen as appreciation of Azerbaijan's activity in this area," head of social and political affairs at the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, Ali Hasanov, said Monday.

Hasanov told the press that the international community decided to hold such an international event in Baku after assessing the situation with the Internet in Azerbaijan. "Furthermore, it will be a major impetus to further development of the Internet in Azerbaijan," he said.

According to Hasanov, Azerbaijan is one of the region's leading countries in this field for the number of users of the Web and its spread.

He said the participation of representatives of many international Internet service providers, government and non-governmental organizations of Europe will stimulate future development of the Internet in Azerbaijan.

"The country will be in the spotlight of all Internet users, because an exhibition will also be held in Azerbaijan in those days," Hasanov said. "Using this opportunity, we will demonstrate our capabilities, and having studied international experience in this field, we will use it in the country in the future."

Azerbaijan has presented its vision for the information and communication technologies sector during preparations for the forum, the Azerbaijani embassy in the U.S. said last Friday.

The IGF-2012 preparatory briefing has been recently held in the U.S with the participation of US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, Philip Verveer, and adviser to the US Embassy in Azerbaijan Nargiz Gurbanova.

Gurbanova spoke about the government's successful policy for ICT development in Azerbaijan, joint ICT projects with the U.S., as well as Azerbaijan's trans-regional initiatives that will help reduce the digital gap between the developed and developing countries and create favorable conditions for sustainable economic development of the countries in the region.

Philip Verveer has welcomed Azerbaijan's efforts to develop the ICT sector and thanked the Azerbaijani government for organizing the forum in Baku. He added that the forum will contribute to further strengthening of bilateral relations.

Verveer is due to visit Baku in early November, Azerbaijani state news agency AzerTac reported.

According to the US embassy in Azerbaijan, Verveer will head the US delegation at the IGF. During the visit, Verveer will also hold meetings with Azerbaijani officials to discuss prospects of bilateral relations.

Ayaz Bayramov, a department head at the Azerbaijani Communications and Information Technologies Ministry, earlier said that Internet content will be one of the main issues at the November forum.

Bayramov said the Internet is well developed in Azerbaijan and also noted that the current pricing policy in this sector could be regarded as satisfactory.

According to him, Azerbaijan will see a revolutionary development of Internet access throughout the country in the next five years due to the development of broadband internet, which the communications ministry will be working on jointly with the State Oil Fund.

Broadband Internet coverage in villages where optic infrastructure has not been developed yet is the core part of the project.

According to the ministry, optic communication lines currently cover 35 per cent of villages, and the project targets delivering broadband services to the rest of the villages.

Some 350 million manats (over $445 million) are to be spent on the ambitious project, which is considered to be quite profitable.

The key issues on the IGF agenda include the fight against cybercrime, the benefits of applying "cloud computing" and protection of intellectual property rights. The forum will also mull the use of the Web in operations to eliminate the consequences of natural disasters.