DUSHANBE, November 20, Asia-Plus — The Ministry of Communications (MoC) has proposed to postpone the consideration of the issue of introduction of free incoming calls for all cellular operators in Tajikistan.
Tabarali Urunov, the head of the MoC legal advice department, said that the Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) had initiated the cancellation of payments for all incoming calls to mobile phones, and the draft document had been submitted for consideration to all relevant ministries and organizations: the ministries of economy and trade, finance, communications, as well as antimonopoly commission.
According to him, experts from the Ministry of Communications have considered the draft document and made a conclusion that the introduction of free incoming calls for all cellular operators is “still premature and may cause numerous problems.” “The point is that our cellular networks are not yet ready for such loading and this may bring to deterioration of the communication quality,” said Urunov, “Market dictates its own rules, and in order to cover their expenses cellular operators will have to raise payments for outgoing calls that will hurt, first of all, users of cellular communications services in the country.”
“Estimates have shown that not only the cellular operators may incur losses [from the introduction of free incoming calls] but also the national budget, which will receive more than 8 million somonis less than its due,” the MoC official noted, terming as an example Russia, which intends to cancel the law on free incoming calls adopted this year.
“The issue of free incoming calls may possibly be resolved in 2009, when the “Transportation telecommunications network in Tajikistan” project is implemented,” Urunov said, noting that this project has not yet been launched.
Today, nine cellular operators providing cellular communications services in different standards, including GSM, AMPS, CDMA450, CDMA20001X, 3G-UMTS и 3G, operate in Tajikistan: Babilon-M; Indigo-Tajikistan; Indigo-Somoncom; Beeline; M-Teco; Tajik Telecom; Telecom Inc (Skytel and TK-Mobile. At present there are 750,000 users of the cellular communications services in the republic.
