Baku, Azerbaijan, March 3
By Huseyn Valiyev - Trend:
Discussions are underway with the Azerbaijan Internet Society (ISOC Azerbaijan) with a view to reducing tariffs on Internet services, Chairman of ISOC, Galib Gurbanov said on March 3.
ISPs are currently providing consultations and costing further reductions of Internet services for end consumers.
"Primary offers from ISPs have been submitted to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan. I think consumers will be able to experience the benefit of the new tariffs in the first half of this year. The issue is a significant decline in prices for Internet access. The cost of services for the end user could be lowered by 30 percent on a percentage ratio," Gurbanov said.
However, Azerbaijan's Internet community chairman strongly opposes the approach to which ISPs resorts over every tariff reduction. The practice of maintaining a tariff strip in the background of increasing Internet traffic in the proposed package is not effective and does not bring expected results, according to Gurbanov.
"Often providers whilst maintaining the price level, increase the carrying of the Internet's capacity. I do not think is the right approach to the solution of problems of price formation on the Internet services market. There is a need for an individual approach for each user category."
"Undoubtedly there is a category of users who do not need high speed, nor spend much time watching streaming video content. This category of users will be interested in buying a package at an affordable price which will include one or two megabits per second of Internet traffic," he said.
Depending on the selected tariff plan, charges for users for unlimited ADSL-access range from 10 manat for 1024 kilobits / sec to 80 manat - 10240 kilobits / second.
The official exchange rate on March 3 is 0,7844 AZN / USD.
Translated by S.I.
Edited by S.M.
