BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar.8
By Sadraddin Aghjayev - Trend:
Azerbaijan’s Azercell Telecom, one of the largest mobile operators in the country managed to complete 2020, a year of challenges for both national and global economy, with no losses and with remarkable achievements, a source in the company told Trend.
According to the source, as the largest taxpayer in Azerbaijan's non-oil sector, with 49 percent share in the country's mobile communications market in 2020, Azercell paid 111.9 million manat ($65.8 million) in taxes to the state budget in 2020.
“Over the past 24 years, the number of payments to the budget made up nearly 2 billion manat ($1.17 billion), including taxes,” added the source.
Moreover, as the source noted, the mobile operator invested $58 million in the development of telecommunications in Azerbaijan last year, and $1.7 billion over 1996-2020.
The source also pointed out that geographical coverage of the mobile operator has reached 94.8 percent, including the liberated (from Armenian occupation during the 44-day war from late Sept. through early Nov.2020) territories of the country.
“The operator’s population coverage stands at 98.8 percent,” added the source.
The source further noted that the coverage of Azercell's 4G network has increased from 74.2 percent to 85.1 percent over the year.
“At the same time, 784 new radio base stations, operating on 4G technology, were installed in 2020. Thus, the total number of stations operating in 4G network reached 2,679. The volume of data transmitted over the Azercell network grew by 2.25 times,” the source said.
In general, internet traffic on the 4G network alone grew by 60 percent last year.
“During 2020, the work aiming to provide stations and tunnels of Baku Metro with LTE network was successfully continued, and currently Azercell 4G network is active in 14 metro stations of the capital city,” concluded the source.
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