2013, most successful year for Azerbaijan’s ICT
By Nigar Orujova
Azerbaijan's Communications and Information Technologies Minister called 2013 the most successful year in the last decade in the development of ICT.
Last year was declared the Year of ICT in Azerbaijan, and it was marked with a series of significant events such as launching Azerbaijan's first telecommunications satellite, Azerspace-1, that connected the country to a group of countries actively developing space industry, Ali Abbasov said on February 8.
Considerable work was been conducted in the infrastructure development of broadband connections and digital TV over the past year, Abbasov said, adding that Azerbaijan once again maintained its leadership in several areas in the CIS and Central Asia, particularly where Internet penetration and availability was concerned.
"Last year, we were able to make the transition to digital broadcasting. The year was also marked with the development of 3G and 4G mobile networks, including the development of broadband Internet," he said.
Promising projects
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution supporting Azerbaijan's initiative on the creation of the Eurasian Alliance (Eurasian Connectivity Alliance - EuraCA) and the construction of the information highway TASIM in September 2013, and Azerbaijan has implemented the first stage of the work in the alliance.
The country is also involved in the creation of the fiber-optic cable line "EPEG" (Europe Persia Express Gateway), which connects Oman and Frankfurt and passes through the territories of Azerbaijan, Poland, and Ukraine. The route in each of these countries is organized on leased capacities.
Azerbaijan is represented in the project by "Delta Telecom", the network infrastructure which is involved in the project. The capacity of the cable route is 3.2 Tbit/s, and its length is about 10,000 kilometers.
The second major project in which Azerbaijan is involved will be the construction project of the Trans-Eurasian Super Information Highway "TASIM", which includes five major operators around the world: Russian "Rostelecom", Kazakh "KazTransCom", Turkish "TurkTelecom", and Chinese "ChinaTelecom".
Azerbaijan is presented in this project by the Center for International Relations and Calculations of the ICT Ministry. The 11,000 km long TASIM highway will have initial network bandwidth of 2 Tbit/s, which will cover the existing needs of Eurasia and eliminate the "information gap" from Western Europe to the Pacific.
The project, which is intended to connect 20 countries, aims to reduce poverty, accelerate economic growth, and play a leading role in the development of the region.
Staff training
Increasing the level of training in the ICT field among the teaching staff is one of the important problems in the field of education in Azerbaijan, Education Minister Mikail Jabbarov said.
"Modern teachers' knowledge of ICT is no less important than their professional knowledge," he said.
Jabbarov said 64 percent of the teaching staff have been trained in ICT. As a result of the measures implemented in the past ten years, today one computer exists for every 18 students, while there was 1 computer for every 1,063 students in 2004. Today, 37 percent of schools have Internet access and some of them have launched the project "E-School".
There is a shortage of personnel in Azerbaijani ICT sector, he said. The newly created ADA University, which is connected to the Azerbaijani Diplomatic Academy and Information Technology Institute, will yield results in preparing the ICT staff for meeting international standards.
ICT figures up
Azerbaijani revenues for the ICT sector and postal services amounted to 1632.2 million manats in 2013, which is 14 percent higher than 2012, a report by the ICT ministry said.
The share of the ICT sector in Azerbaijan's GDP was 1.9 percent last year, the report showed. The capacity of international Internet channel reached 200 Gbit/s in 2013.