Azerbaijan, Baku / corr. Trend I.Khalilova / The Tariff Council of Azerbaijan will re-open discussions on the application of minute payments for local calls after raising the quality of the service in the telecommunication system, said the Chairman of the Tariff Council, the Minister of Economic Development of Azerbaijan, Heydar Babayev, at a press-conference on 17 May. "In addition, after creating balance between the subscriber payment and payment for the conversation, it will be possible to re-discuss the issue of applying limits to local calls. However, it will not take place in the near future," the Minister said.
According to Babayev, large reforms are underway in this field and the quality of telecommunication services in Azerbaijan is possibly higher than in other countries. The Government even intends to create a Fund for the development of this sector. Up to now, the tariffs in Azerbaijan for inter-city and international conversations were higher as compared to other countries due to the low subscriber payment. For this reason the Tariff Council made a decision in its 14 May meeting to increase the subscriber payment and decrease other tariffs. Although the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies offered to increase the subscriber fee up to AZN 4, the Tariff Council increased it from AZN 0.66 to AZN 2. In addition, the Tariff Council rejected to apply minute-by-minute payment for a conversation if the subscriber has already reached their free 450-minutes limit.