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No Internet in Tashkent Internet Cafés

Politics Materials 30 May 2008 18:13 (UTC +04:00)

Uzbekistan, Tashkent, 30 May / Trend corr. E.Khojayev / Three months ago, the streets in Tashkent were full of signboards "Internet-café" and "Internet-club". At present, these signboards have been removed. The signboards were removed by the order of regional authorities, in their struggle against illegal advertising.

The main reason is that most of the Internet-cafés', which are permanently visited by juveniles who are interested in computer plays, are not connected to Internet. Some cafes do not restore the license term and some consider it more profitable to render games and films to customers than Internet. They consider that it would be easier, as in such cases cafes are not obliged to inform special services about the websites being used by customers.

"Recently, I needed Internet and I went to all Internet-cafes in Tashkent and observed that some cafes were full of juveniles and others were not connected to Internet at all. At last I went to the hotel Central, where I could only connect to Internet. However, I paid ten times more than what a common internet café cost's. I paid $3, while I would have paid merely 250 or 300 sums if the internet café's would have been operational".

Now, the journalists in Tashkent remember the days when there was an Internet-cafe in the editing building three years ago. The café was opened by the OSCE representative in Uzbekistan. The café provided internet services especially to journalists for free of charge. Similar Internet-cafes were later on opened in Samarkand, Urgench and Nukus cities for journalists. However, OSCE stopped functioning of these cafes under the state pressure.

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