Belarus Software Company to Build a Search Engine for Kazakhstan

SoftInform sofware development company from Belarus opened its branch in Almaty, Kazakhstan in February 2008. One of its first goals of SoftInform is to gain image in Kazakhstan by developing a new search engine for users of Kazakhstan.

SoftInform has experience in developing search engines and information security products.

WiMax in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

AsiaInfo Internet Provider announced a start of development and testing of a new wireless broadband Internet access in Kyrgyzstan. It's a first WiMax technology in Kyrgyzstan.

First base station with 15km radius has already been installed in the capital - Bishkek, it's able to provide WiMax Internet access to the whole city. Approximate radius of Bishkek city is about 8 kilometers.



Price plans (converted to euro as of 24/02/2008):
1) Office - Eco
Installation 18 euro
Monthly payment 21 euro
Traffic limit: 250Mb international, 1Gb Kyrgyzstan
Extra traffic: 1 Gb international - 40 euro, 1Gb Kyrgyzstan - 1.5 euro
Connection speed: 64Kbps

2) Office - Optim
Installation 28 euro
Monthly payment 35.5 euro
Traffic limit: 650Mb international, 3Gb Kyrgyzstan
Extra traffic: 1 Gb international - 38 euro, 1Gb Kyrgyzstan - 1.4 euro
Connection speed: 128Kbps

3) Office - Pro
Installation 36 euro
Monthly payment 60 euro
Traffic limit: 1400Mb international, 8Gb Kyrgyzstan
Extra traffic: 1 Gb international - 36 euro, 1Gb Kyrgyzstan - 1.3 euro
Connection speed: 256Kbps

Official price-list:
AsiaInfo WiMax Price Plans (Russian language)

You can compare prices to mobile Internet providers here:
Mobile Internet Prices in Kyrgyzstan

Here are comparison-friendly price plans converted to USD:
1) Office - Eco
First month + installation: $58, i.e. 1Mb international - $0.23, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.06
Other months: 1Mb international - $0.13, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.03
Extra traffic: 1Mb international - $0.06, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.002

2) Office - Optim
First month + installation: $95, i.e. 1Mb international - $0.15, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.03
Other months: 1Mb international - $0.09, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.02
Extra traffic: 1Mb international - $0.05, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.002

3) Office - Pro
First month + installation: $142, i.e. 1Mb international - $0.10, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.02
Other months: 1Mb international - $0.06, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.01
Extra traffic: 1Mb international - $0.05, 1Mb Kyrgyzstan - $0.002

Some conclusions from AsiaInfo WiMax vs Mobile Internet comparison:

WiMax from AsiaInfo is always cheaper for Kyrgyzstan traffic.
WiMax from AsiaInfo is cheaper and faster if you need more than 1400Mb international or 8Gb Kyrgyzstan traffic.
Mobile Internet from Fonex or Nexi is faster and cheaper than AsiaInfo's Office-Eco and Office-Optim.
Mobile Internet has no traffic limit and distinction between international and Kyrgyzstan traffic.

Image from: JohnTP.com

Uzbek .uz Domains Reach 6000

Uzbek Telecom reported that .uz domains registrations reached 6,000 milestone in 14th of February.

It's an increase of 2,000 domains versus the same period last year. The total number of domains registered last year was 3,224, and 1,069 were removed.

There are seven official domain registrar companies in Uzbekistan. The registration fee is between USD 18 and USD 25.

Source: Telecom Paper

Mysterious NewsCentralAsia.net

Blogger from NewEurasia.net is suspicious about NewsCentralAsia.net portal.

Here is the article: A Mysterious Web Portal

Kyrgyzstan to Change Cyrillic to Latin

Bishkek Press Club asked Tashboo Jumagulov, the chairman of the National Commission of state language, and the parliamentarian Zainidin Kurmanov to give their comments about the discussions in the parliament about switching the Kyrgyz alphabet from Cyrillic to Roman. The chairman of the national commission says that sooner or later Kyrgyzstan should be using Roman letters, since all of Turkic people except Kyrgyzstan use Roman, and Kazakhstan will complete switching to it by 2010. In addition, continues Jumagulov, about 85% of Kyrgyzstan population speaks Turkic languages, and 80% of the world use Roman, and the most important thing, it is more appropriate to Kyrgyz language than Cyrillic. Kyrgyz people had been using Roman letters for 18 years before using Cyrillic. At the same time, only 10 countries in the world use Cyrillic and 9 of them are Slavic people.

The parliamentarian Kurmanov thinks that it is not the right time for Kyrgyzstan for changing its alphabet because it is quite expensive and there are more important problems to be solved. Though he notes that most Turkic countries are changing to Roman, and it is an inevitable process. Both of them also indicate that it is a matter of economic situation in Kyrgyzstan.

It seems that Kyrgyzstan can learn the experience of neighbor countries, carefully analyzing pros and cons of such a big transformation. Also, changing the alphabet can cause much confusion for Russian speaking people who study Kyrgyz language, and a huge misunderstanding between generations who taught different alphabets.

Source: NewEurasia.net

IT Cooperation between Russia and Uzbekistan

Boris Yevgenyevich Atamanov, the head of Russian trade representative office in Uzbekistan told about perspectives and conditions of economic relations between Uzbekistan and Russia during his interview with Uzbekistan Today.

Here is his opinion about IT cooperation between the countries:

[...]

UT: The cooperation in high technology between our countries also intensifies. What projects are planned in this sector?

BA: - That’s true; information technology today along with fuel-energy complex is one of the most developing sectors of mutual cooperation.

The investment volume of Mobile Tele Systems public corporation (MTS) in Uzbekistan economy made up US$250 million. The Russian “VympelCom” also intends to invest US$150 million into cellular communications in Uzbekistan.

Russian Eventis Telecom Investment Company has invested US$5 million in internet services in Uzbekistan in 2007.

[...]

Full interview: Uzbekistan Today

Free Internet for Disabled in Uzbekistan

USDB, Uzbek Society of Disabled People, started up a project that provides free Internet access for disabled in 6 out of 14 regions of Uzbekistan. But there are more regions planned to be covered.

This project gives a free Internet access possibility to about 2 million disabled people in Uzbekistan in total. It was realized with the help of by Uzbek Ministry for Foreign Economic Relations and Government of Japan.

Source: Infocom.uz (Russian language)
Representative photo is used from physorg.com

PCs with Mobile Broadband from Microsoft and MTS in Central Asia

Software giant Microsoft is working with Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS) to launch their subscription based program in in Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

The two companies would now offer Windows-based PCs on a subscription basis in those countries similarly to the service provided by Microsoft in Mexico and Brazil. The partnership between them was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

It's planned to start providing work stations with Windows Vista and built-in mobile broadband access by June 2008.

Source: TechWhack.com

K'cell Selects Telenity's Canvas Converged Messaging Solutions

Fastest Growing Operator in Kazakhstan Deploys Canvas SMSC and MMSC.

Telenity announced that K’cell deployed Telenity’s next generation IP-based Short Message Service Center, Canvas SMSC and Multimedia Messaging Service Center, Canvas MMSC in its GSM network.

Since its initial operation, K’cell has lead a key role in giving tone and direction to the rapid development and growth of the cellular market in Kazakhstan where mobile penetration is anticipated to grow 60% in the next three years. Through its visionary actions, K’cell was the first to launch GPRS/EDGE technologies, and millions of subscribers in Kazakhstan enjoyed such services as Mobile Internet, WAP, and MMS throughout the country. Currently K’cell is actively preparing for its 3G network implementation offering its subscribers revolutionary services such as Video-calls and Mobile Television. Within this project, K’cell carried out legacy and end-of-life replacements and installation of new equipment including higher capacity messaging servers, Canvas SMSC and Canvas MMSC, ready to support next generation services.

The success of SMS service is due to its very fast means of peer-to-peer communication and addition of new subscribers. Industry analysts estimate that by 2012, global SMS revenues will reach US$67 billion driven by 3.7 trillion messages. The ongoing growth of SMS requires wireless operators to continue to replace their legacy messaging network infrastructure and build out and upgrade to a more modular network environment.

“We were looking for a messaging solution that would resolve our traffic peak, maintenance cost, flexible routing and revenue assurance issues,” stated Veysel Aral, CEO at K’cell. “Telenity’s Canvas SMSC and Canvas MMSC met both our technical and business requirements and they are allowing us to get ready for our 3G network implementation with a sound IP-based architecture.”

“K’cell is a great example of a leading operator with the right vision and successful execution for the next generation mobile world,” says Dilip Singh, CEO at Telenity. “K’cell has rapidly grown to over six million subscribers and by aggressively expanding and replacing multiple legacy messaging platforms with the next generation converged integrated messaging platform, it’s ensuring that its customers experience the highest quality always-on messaging and innovative value added services”.

“With K’cell as our customer where nearly 100% of its SMS traffic goes through our Canvas SMSC, Telenity is now providing all affiliate companies of Fintur Holdings with it’s Canvas portfolio of next generation solutions, such as converged messaging, ringback tones, and value added services including video services,” said Serif Beykoz, General Manager, Telenity EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). “We are proud to have Fintur affiliates’ trust in and endorsement of our products.”

Canvas SMSC and Canvas MMSC are an integral part of Telenity’s converged messaging solutions that are all built on a common operating environment that avoids the silo nature of point solutions, while providing a common architecture and administrative environment for all value added services for current (2G/3G) and future IMS networks. Canvas SMSC and Canvas MMSC are high performance systems with a fault tolerant real time charging capability. They enhance revenues from person-to-person (P2P) and application-to-person (A2P) messaging with a modular, scalable next generation IP based architecture designed to save operators both CAPEX and OPEX.

Canvas SMSC and Canvas MMSC help operators to:

* Gracefully handle traffic peaks to assure additional/no lost revenues
* Increase ARPU by enabling more applications without system overload or service outage
* Reduce their maintenance costs with open standards based system infrastructure
* Ensure future network agnostic solution supporting both legacy and nextgen networks
* Add on to their current infrastructure yet grow thus preserving their investment
* Maximize their revenue assurance and minimize fraud with real time charging

Source: java.sys-con.com

New Web 2.0 Project in Kazakhstan: Newzzz.kz

Newzzz.kz is a new Web 2.0 project from Kazakhstan. It's Kazakh own digg.com.

“Newzzz.KZ provides social news in Kazakhstan. You publish everything interesting what is happening in Kazakhstan and around. You decide which news are worth reading” - says the offcial disclaimer.

Every registered user receives not only the right to publish premoderated posts, but also a chance to win 5,000 tenge. Premoderation screens off hooligans and promotes the best posts to the main page. On your left you can see a tag cloud. In order to attract users they exploit moral incentive in addition to the financial one - top users are ranked in a separate rating.

“Part of the site’s creators was born in Kazakhstan, and another part simply respects this country, … which unfortunately lacks good websites”, reads the “About the project” chapter - so, in fact, this is a non-Kazakh product.

Regretfully, in spite of great ideology of the project (much more efficient and up-to-date than, say, “Newsfactory” that has eaten away lots of donor’s money), which could create a real alternative to the traditional media and overcome the vacuum of information fro the country’s regions, so far the protal is overwhelmingly stuffed with the news that are not related to Kazakhstan at all, and that are not the posts actually - but mere reprints fro the mainstream media.

Site language: Russian

Source: NewEurasia.net

Link: Newzzz.kz - Only Your News (Kazakhstan)

Economic Freedom 2008 - Kyrgyzstan is in Top 70

The 14th annual Index of Economic Freedom prepared by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal was publicized on the 14th January. 162 countries took part and the economic freedom of each country was measured by 10 indicators such as free trade, business and investment opportunity, and private property.

Kyrgyzstan was the 70th in the list. It was ahead of its neighbors Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. It showed even better results than Poland and Turkey. All countries and their ratings were shown on one map and one can see that Kyrgyzstan has taken place somewhere in the middle.

So, according to the Heritage Foundation, Kyrgyzstan’s freedom equals to 61,1%. Here is the percentage for each indicator: Business opportunity - 60.4%, Free trade - 81.4% , Fiscal freedom - 93.9%, Freedom from state- 76.1%, Monetary freedom- 75.6%, Investment freedom- 50%, Financial freedom - 50%, Private ownership - 30%.

This way Kyrgyzstan is in the top 70 of the most economically free countries. It did much better than last year and according to the researchers it is due to the improved investment climate of the country. Kyrgyzstan now is the 12th country member of 30 countries of Asia region and its scores are more than average.

Source: New Eurasia (Russian version) (English version)
Original report source: Heritage Foundation

Ratings:
1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. Ireland
4. Australia
5. United States
6. New Zealand
7. Canada
8. Chile
9. Switzerland
10. United Kingdom
..................
70. Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz Republic)
..................
74. Turkey
75. Slovenia
76. Kazakhstan
..................
80. Greece
..................
83. Poland
..................
114. Tajikistan
..................
130. Uzbekistan
..................
152. Turkmenistan
..................

Full list: Index of Economic Freedom

Kyrgyzstan Profile: Economic Freedom 2008 - Kyrgyz Republic

Best Governmental Websites in Kyrgyzstan 2007

UNDP Democratic Governance Program has named the winners of the Best Website contest held among ministries and agencies, the press service of the UNDP reported.

14 ministries and agencies have participated in the contest. The jury was composed by representatives of state bodies, civil society and business sector. They evaluated weak and strong points of the websites, including their content, usefulness and usability.

The website of the Ministry of Justice www.minjust.kg (currently unavailable) awarded the first place. The website is easy-to-use and provides free access to the regulatory acts of Kyrgyzstan. The Ministry received $1000.

The website of the Ministry of Finance www.minfin.kg was honored with the second place and $700.

The third place was shared by the websites of the State Tax Committee www.sti.gov.kg and State Agency on Vocational Education www.kesip.in.kg. Both agencies received $400.

The awards will be used to purchase digital and computer equipment (photo cameras, scanners, voice recorders, etc.) to meet the winners needs.

Source: 24.kg

Russian MTS plans to introduce broadband in Turkmenistan

On December 18 in Ashgabat President Berdymukhammedov met with Russian Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko to discuss Caspian Pipeline and also with the CEO and president of the Russian Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) telecommunications company, Leonid Melamed, to discuss plans for the company's expansion into the Turkmen telecoms sector, according to Turkmen Television.




Leonid Melamed also briefed Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov on his company's plans to introduce high-speed, broadband Internet services to the country as part of its planned investment. Melamed also agreed to a Turkmen request to train an undetermined number of Turkmen specialists in Russia. RG

Source: Radio Free Europe

RELATED NEWS:



June 29, 2007

MTS to provide Turkmenistan with wireless Internet

The CEO of Mobile TeleSystems, Leonid Melamed, met with Turkmen President, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, on June 29. During the talks, Melamed said his company plans to expand its presence in the Turkmen telecommunication market, Turkmenistan.ru reported.

Melamed offered MTS's services in the field of high information technologies, in particular wireless Internet. "Having expressed interest in the offer, Berdimuhammedov emphasised that Turkmenistan pins great hopes on the attraction of latest achievements of scientific-technical progress and world best experience in this field," the Turkmen State News Agency (TDH) reported.

Source: New Nations

CNews expands to Kazakhstan market

CNews has announced the opening of its editorial office in Kazakhstan and the launch of a corresponding Internet site at CNews.kz. This online publication has become Russia's first mass media source dedicated to hi-tech news in Central Asia.

The IT sector in the Republic of Kazakhstan has been viewed as one of the most promising and fastest growing in the CIS. This market has drawn a lot of interest from investors, IT vendors and systems integrators both inside the country and internationally. All major IT brands have already set up their representative offices in Kazakhstan. According to IDC forecasts, Kazakhstan's IT market will reach $773m in 2007, up 27% from a year earlier.

"We have taken a confident step beyond Russia's borders as promised," CNews Director Eduard Erkola said. "We have picked Kazakhstan as a foreign launch pad, as it is a nation set most firmly on the path towards the formation and development of high-technology. CNews has become the first Russian resource focusing on the Central Asian ICT market, and we are positive that with the energy of our Kazakh colleagues, we will be better suited to meet the requirements of the most demanding readers."



"Equipped with a powerful tool - the long-standing experience of the Russian editorial office - we will be able to hoist the publication to a strong position among Kazakhstan's business mass media," CNews Editor-in-Chief Maxim Kazak is assured. "ICT markets of neighboring states have also been showing healthy progress, and in the coming year we are set to establish stable information channels linking us to Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan."

CNews.ru has been operating on the Russian market since 2000. In December 2004, the CNews magazine appeared in a print format for the first time. In August 2006, a representative office was set up in St. Petersburg, and the English version of the CNews website was launched in December 2006. In November 2007, the monthly audience of CNews.ru reached 2.9 million unique users.

Source: CNews.ru