Tajik Phone Firms Fight Control Plan

A proposal to bring Tajikistan’s mobile phone network under government control is causing heated debate, with opponents of the scheme warning that it will undermine one of the few successful parts of the country’s economy.



Under a proposal by the ministry for transport and communications, the numerous commercial phone companies would have to route all calls through a centralised switching system, which would be owned by the state-run firm Tajiktelecom.



Officials argue that the system would bring multiple benefits – it would improve national security by allowing calls to be monitored, and it would give the state a better idea of how much consumers are being charged, so that it can claim the correct amount of tax revenue.



“There are three aims to creating a unified mobile network centre – strengthening the country’s security, making the operations of mobile firms more transparent, and as a result raising budget revenues that would previously have been missed,” the deputy minister for transport and telecommunications, Beg Zuhurov, told the Asia Plus newspaper on February 17.



He accused some phone operators of not declaring the full volume of traffic they handle, thereby evading taxes. With centralised control, this would stop, he said.



On the question of national security, Zuhurov explained that when police wanted to investigate phone calls, they would have one place to go to instead of multiple companies, making their enquiries more efficient.



The current proposal, in the form of a bill submitted to parliament in December, is the second attempt by the transport and communications ministry to centralise control of the network. The first attempt in 2006 was abandoned following protests from the phone companies, who were backed by international organisations like the World Bank.



Although Tajikistan is one of poorest of the former Soviet republics, its mobile phone industry has boomed since the authorities introduced a new strategy in 2003 making it easier for private firms to compete with the state phone company Tajiktelecom. There are now ten mobile phone operators, some of which have parent companies in the United States, Russia and China.



As in 2006, these firms are fighting the government proposal vigorously, meeting telecoms ministry officials, speaking to the media, and last month writing to President Imomali Rahmon to argue that handing network control to the state telecoms agency runs counter to anti-monopoly laws.



“The owner [Tajiktelecom] will decide single-handedly which calls are to be allowed through the network traffic centre and how much it is going to charge for this,” said the letter, signed by eight leading phone and internet companies.



The firms argued that the quality of their services would become uniform, cutting out the element of competition. Prices would also rise because they would have to factor in the cost of setting up and running the network traffic centre.



The statement noted that at a time when Tajikistan was feeling the effects of global financial crisis, the telecoms industry was probably the only stable sector of the economy. Undermining this success would reduce rather than raise tax revenues, it warned.



According to the Association of Mobile Phone Operators, there are 3.5 million registered mobile phone users in Tajikistan, approximating to half the country’s entire population.



The benefits of mobile technology have been huge, allowing the country to sidestep the problem of a crumbling landline network, and extending coverage to remote areas that never had phones at all. Competition between the private firms has made ownership affordable even for people on modest incomes.



Official statistics indicate that the private phone companies earned 230 million US dollars last year, compared with just 28 million earned by Tajiktelecom and the postal service taken together.



Igor Klimko, who heads Takom, the locally-registered filial of Russia’s VimpelCom, says giving the state control over a “gateway” through which all calls must be routed will not only hit the phone industry, but harm the country’s economy as a whole.



Some officials and politicians are privately expressing alarm about the implications of reducing competition.



“Any move towards a monopoly will bring more problems,” a member of parliament who wished to remain anonymous told IWPR. “The uninterrupted provision of mobile connections, prices and service quality will all be placed at risk.”



A government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ministry’s plans would undo a great deal of what the telecoms industry had achieved to date.



“We should… should keep the market open,” he told IWPR. “No one can deny what has been achieved by the telecoms communications companies, so that Tajiks are able to communicate freely and talk to friends and relatives around the world at little cost.”



Komyob Jalilov, a political analyst with the Institute of Philosophy and Law, believes that the ministry, which controls Tajiktelecom, is acting out of self-interest. “There are reports that Tajiktelecom is massively in debt, which is where all this talk of a unified centre stems from,” he said.



Aslibegim Manzarshoeva of the National Association of Independent Media, says there is a huge gulf between the level of service offered by privately-owned and state phone companies



“We know what a state monopoly means,” she said. “Recently a [landline] phone in our office was out of order. We couldn’t get an engineer in for two weeks despite repeated calls to the Dushanbe city phone authorities. By contrast, the mobile companies work efficiently and quickly. They’re also polite, and they explain everything and fix problems in no time.”



Another concern voiced by several interviewees was that centralising phone traffic would open the way to state surveillance over private communications.



“That violates the principles of democracy to which we aspire,” said the anonymous government official.



Hojimahmad Umarov, head of macroeconomic research at the Institute for Economic Studies, which has close ties to the ministry for economic development and trade, agrees that the argument about national security does not stand up to scrutiny



“Security should be the domain of the law-enforcement agencies, not the transport and communications ministry,” he said. “This [plan] will lead to growing authoritarianism and to spying on citizens’ private communications.”



Klimko of the Takom phone firm has indicated that the phone companies would accept a compromise such as some kind of call monitoring centre which would satisfy all the government’s security needs without costing a lot or encroaching on the industry’s right to independence.



Omarov also suggested that in the current economic crisis, the government had more urgent things to do than revamping the phone system.



At a February 25 meeting attended by representatives of the phone companies and the communications ministry, an official from President Rahmon’s office questioned deputy minister Zuhurov on the law he was proposing.



Alijon Rafiev, an advisor on communications issues in the presidential administration, said that in its present form, the bill lacked either a proper justification or financial arguments to support it. He also argued that by assigning a management role to Tajiktelecom, the plan contravened the law.



He went on to ask what would happen if a system that was centralised to the extent now being proposed broke down due to accident or human error.



“I would urge you to provide clear information, conduct an analysis and put forward a proposal where the risks are minimised, and where the existing system of international communications isn’t overturned, so that one fine day we don’t find ourselves completely cut off,” he told the deputy minister.



Mukammal Odinaeva is an independent journalist in Dushanbe.