Azertelecom extends coverage in Internet market

/By AzerNews/

By Nigar Orujova

Enterprises began to look for alternative options to connect to the Internet after an emergency that caused the Internet outage in almost the entire territory of Azerbaijan, Commercial Director of Azertelecom Sabina Mammadli said.

A number of providers, the country's leading banks and a processing center have already joined the network service of Azertelecom, she said.

“At present, negotiations are underway with the Education Ministry, some banks and enterprises,” she said.

These resulted in the 15-percent increase in the market coverage of Azertelecom, the commercial director said, reminding that so far, the company had a market share of 30-40 percent.

With the expansion of the company’s customer base, partners in Russia, Turkey and Georgia have provided Azertelecom with additional channels, she noted. As a result, the company increased the capacity of the data channels by 20-30 gigabits per second.

“Currently, the data rate is already up to 70 gigabits per second, and in the near future we plan to increase it to 100 gigabits per second,” Mammadli said.

Azerbaijan nearly lost all internet connectivity due to technical issues on November 16.

The problem occurred since a fire broke out in the lines connected to the DATA-center of Delta Telecom, Azerbaijan’s primary provider. Internet outage for several hours affected the functioning of some organizations in the country.

Earlier, Galib Gurbanov, the chairman of the Azerbaijan Internet Community, said Internet service providers that render their services to senior customers including banks and transport companies must have an alternative access to international communication channels.

Azertelecom is a telecommunications operator in Azerbaijan established in 2008 to operate in the fixed-line market through the provision of international fixed telephony, Internet and data services and voice services.

The network of the company connects Azerbaijan with its neighbors to the north, south, east and west.