Internet In Azerbaijan

Internet in Azerbaijan is vulnerable to government monitoring and censorship. The ruling Aliyev family owns two of the three largest mobile operators in Azerbaijan. The ownership of the third large mobile operator is unknown, as it registered to an offshore company. The authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan has a history of blocking websites that criticize the government.

According to the government, 85% of the population was online in 2013.

Internet penetration and Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

During the Soviet era, Azerbaijan was a major center for IT development, especially regarding process control systems. This legacy left the country with a reasonably large and well-developed technical infrastructure, including several research institutes and a political leadership savvy about the importance of the ICT sector. Internet development is following the pattern typical of many developing countries, with access centered on major cities, particularly the capital city, Baku. The number of Internet users has grown over the last several years to 3.7 million users, or 44 percent of the population, as of June 2010, estimated by the International Telecommunication Union.

Many Azerbaijanis access the Internet from shared connections, such as their place of work or study, or from Internet cafés (with the latter providing access for 19 percent of users in 2007). The rate of ownership of computers is low (2.4 units per 100 inhabitants), and Internet usage in homes is moderate, accounting for 41.6 percent of the total usage for 2007, up from 36.4 percent in 2006. For connectivity, some individual subscribers rely on mobile telephony, though access remains expensive, with most using dial-up services as their primary means. Official survey results for 2007 indicate that economic and educational barriers are the main contributing factors for these low figures, with 31.4 percent blaming the high cost of computer equipment and 21.8 percent indicating a lack of necessary skills.

The cost of Internet service is steadily decreasing: as of 2010, monthly unlimited ADSL connection of 1 Mbit/s cost around US$20–25 per month. While the cost of international traffic has gone down over the last several years, the cost for usage of the local infrastructure remains unchanged. Approximately 50 percent of the expenses of small ISPs are local connection costs paid to the state-owned company controlling the market. Because these expenses are the same for all providers, they agreed among themselves to charge end users the same price for unlimited monthly dial-up service. Larger providers temporarily blocked the ISPs that tried to contravene the concerted practice. In December 2007, for example, two small providers—SuperOnline and AvirTel —were blocked by local ISPs (Adanet and IntraNS) while trying to provide service at a lower price for customers. Shortly after the providers agreed to bring the price of their services into line, the block was lifted. For similar reasons, the larger ISPs blocked another smaller local ISP, Azeronline.

In Azerbaijan, fixed-line telephony is largely centralized in the hands of the state-owned telecom provider AzTelecom, which also acts as a commercial ISP. Delta Telecom (previously operating as AzerSat) is the main ISP in the country, supplying international connectivity to at least 90–95 percent of all users. Delta Telecom also owns the Internet international gateway and sells international traffic to almost all ISPs. The nonprofit AZNET/AZRENA project provides connectivity to the educational and research community and benefits from a satellite channel built under NATO's "Silk Road" project. AzEuroTel started commercial activity as a telecommunications company and thus managed to establish a relatively wide network infrastructure. AzEuroTel and Adanet also have satellite channels to Russia. AzerOnline, which is funded predominantly by the largest mobile operator, Azercell, has an additional satellite connection to Turkey. The cost of satellite connection is very high because of the monopoly regime set by the MCIT.

Since the second half of 2007, Azerbaijan has not had a free Internet Exchange Point (IXP). Delta Telecom controls the only IXP, and charges the same amount for local and international traffic. Providers have not been able to agree on setting up another IXP. The external traffic of Azerbaijan is now 6 Gbit/s, which is a notable increase from the 155 Mbit/s capacity of 2006. Delta Telecom has external fiber optic connections with Russia via TransTelekom and with Turkey via Rostelecom (Indirectly, Delta Telecom serves Georgian users because a local ISP, TransEuroCom, buys international traffic from Delta and carries it by fiber to Georgia. Through the TRACECA

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