DUSHANBE, January 26, Asia-Plus — The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) plans to set control over quality of cellular communication services provided in Tajikistan.
According to the State Communications Oversee and Regulatory Service (SCORS), the ministry intends to purchase appropriate equipment already this year. A source at a SCORS said that the equipment could be purchased from the Swiss Ascom Holding AG.
According to him, they will control installation of conjunction within operators’ networks (losses of calls and time of peak load should not exceed 5%) as well as to ensure that radio frequencies used by operator meet requirements of the documentation.
The Asia-Plus interlocutor added that the ministry had been forced to make this move following numerous complaints by users of cellular communications services.
Concerning the control equipment, the source said that it is not clear yet whether national budget has earmarked funds for this purchase or not. “The equipment costs up to $10 million, depending on technical parameters,” the source said.
According to him, a number of cellular operators active in the republic impacts the quality of the provided services. “Nine cellular operators currently function in Tajikistan, while even in the Russian Federation, a number of the cellular operators is fewer, or in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, there is only one cellular operator,” the source said, linking that to simplified procedure of getting license for providing cellular communications services in Tajikistan.
According to the Ministry of Communications, nine cellular operators now provide services in different standards function in Tajikistan: MLT; Babilon-M, Indigo-Tajikistan; Indigo-Somoncom; Beeline; Tacom; M Teco; Telecom Inc (Skytel) and TK Mobile. Besides, another cellular operator DilFon providing services in the GSM 1800 standard will join them in the spring.
At present more than 780,000 people use cellular communications services in Tajikistan.
