Number of broadband Internet connections in Baku to hit 400,000 by year-end
By Nigar Orujova
The number of households with access to broadband Internet has reached 250,000 in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, with the figure expected to reach 400,000 by the end of 2013, according to the Baku Telephone production association.
Unlike the private segment of the market, the corporate segment, including enterprises, the financial sector, as well as schools and high schools, law enforcement bodies and courts, have access to the internet mainly through fiber-optic lines.
"In total, the level of the internet penetration has surpassed the 75 percent mark. The Production Association prepared and presented to the [communications] ministry the project on development of the fiber-optic access to the internet. This refers to the possibility of providing access to the internet for the end-users through fiber-optic lines using FTTH (Fiber to the Home) technology," the company said.
The FTTH technology guarantees extensive capacities, with the data transfer speed reaching dozens of megabits.
The traffic speed in FTTH technology will vary between 10 and 100 Mbit/s, while with ADSL the private user can enjoy only 2 to 8 Mbit/s speed depending on the telephone line's condition and distance from the telephone exchange being used.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies, some 103 million manats (about $131 million) were allocated for the implementation of the broadband Internet development project in Azerbaijan in 2013.
The "Fiber to Home" is expected to be implemented in three phases. The main goal of the project is to provide remote regions of the country with broadband Internet with a speed of 10 to 100 Mbit/s and expand the number of users to 85 percent.
The project envisions a phased transfer of the operator's regional telecommunications center to the Next Generation Network (NGN), alternate routing of optical telecommunication lines and construction of high-speed IP-lines based on MPLS technology over a DWDM network.
The possibility of using GPON technology is considered in order to connect optical telecommunication lines to the end-users in major cities, while using CDMA 1x EV-DO and WiMAX standards is mulled to provide broadband services to the people living in remote regions of the country.
To date, automatic telephone systems of regional telecommunication centers have been replaced by electronic systems. The length of fiber-optic lines laid by the Aztelekom production association since the beginning of 2012 to connect such systems has reached 2,000 kilometers.
Azerbaijan has maintained its leading position among the CIS countries in terms of broadband Internet penetration over the past three years. Internet penetration rates increased from 65 to 70 percent in 2012. Operations were conducted to improve the quality of data transmission services. The capacity of international communication channels more than doubled compared to 2011 and prices were reduced by 35 percent.
At present, Internet fees for connection speed of 1 Mbit/s account for about 3 percent of the average wage in Azerbaijan. For comparison's sake, the fees are up to 20 percent of wages in developing countries.