Rural Tajiks Crying Out for Internet Access

The number of people with access to the internet is growing in Tajikistan, but usage remains concentrated in the cities even though rural areas represent a potential market. The government might do well to consider incentives to encourage internet providers to move outside the towns.



The latest estimates from the communications ministry suggest that around one-fifth of Tajikistan’s seven-million population have regular access to the web. There are 14 internet providers, but access is largely confined to 12 major towns and cities.



Residents of smaller towns and villages are increasingly asking local government to connect them up to the internet.



An employee of an international organisation working in the southern Khatlon region says even in remote areas, many people are familiar with the advantages the internet can offer, especially for making cheap phone calls to relatives working abroad.



Anton Gnitko, technical director at Istera, a provider company, says there just aren’t enough clients to justify the investment needed to expand outside the towns. But paradoxically, many organisations choose not to set up in rural areas precisely because they need to have web access.



“It’s a vicious circle – there’s no economic sense in investing in it because there aren’t the clients, but the customer base fails to expand because there’s no access,” he told NBCentralAsia.



Provider companies often announce plans to extend coverage to other areas, but they lack the funds to do so since profit-margins are tight and competition is keen in the towns.



Gnitko believes the government should offer incentives to firms that expand into rural areas, for example tax exemption on the technology they import for this purpose.



Bahriddin Isamutdinov, coordinator of the Dushanbe Centre for Tourist Development, has another proposal – if internet access was laid on in areas visited by tourists, it would generate revenues from the money they spent on it.



“We see tourists bringing in their own internet connection systems or satellite phones they bought at home. But they could be spending that money in our country,” said Isamutdinov.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)