Meanwhile, the claims of Emmy and Mihran fans, that only their SMS votes were prevented from going through were discarded by at least one mobile operator - Beeline, saying it would be technically impossible to filter messages before they had been sent and gone through the network of the operator. The Public Services Regulatory Commission of Armenia approved the model treaty on interconnect calls of subscribers of one-fixed line operator to another operator and defined set rates, according to which the interconnect is AMD 2,5 in Yerevan and AMD 10 in the regions, instead of the proposed by ArmenTel trademark Beeline AMD 5.
Beeline currently enjoys a dominant position in the Armenian market of fixed telephony services. Other companies possessing licenses for building their own alternative fixed-line networks, had been complaining, that Beeline is setting arbitrary rates, which are too expensive and render investment in this sphere meaningless.
Meanwhile, Beeline has prolonged the terms of campaign for free of charge connection to the public switched telephone network PSTN till March 15, Good news came this week for the internet users throughout Armenia. The coverage of the company is quite limited - it is mainly available in downtown Yerevan and residential areas close to Barekamutyun metro station and Davitashen district, however, this move is yet another indication that the internet market is looking at further price cuts.
Rather dubious data from Columbia based company Miniwatts Marketing Group, made headlines in the Armenian media this week. The group which offers research in Internet industry features a website called Internet World Stats, which claims the number of Armenian internet subscribers makes only 6. While there is no data immediately available on the total number of Armenian internet users, it is important to point out, that a similar figure was presented by the International Telecommunications Union 2 years ago and within the past two years the Armenian internet market has seen very robust growth.
Even if we only consider the numbers of 3G internet users in the country which is well over thousand , and add to that the number of DSL, ADSL, WiFi, WiMax and dial-up users, the data presented by the Columbian company seems very far from reality. Two bits of industry news were announced this week. The fair is expected to bring together representatives of 15 Armenian ICT companies. Presentation of robots, seminars and trainings are scheduled during the event.
