Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr. S.Babayeva / Gulam Abdullayev, the head consultant of the Department on coordination of state enterprises of the Azerbaijani Communication and Information Technologies Ministry, has stated that the proposals of interested companies on implementation of the project regarding launch of national communication satellite of AzerSat have been considered.
According to Abdullayev, the proposals of six main satellite companies, Intelsat, Intersputnik, Spacecom, have been considered. More acceptable proposals of companies will be submitted to the government, which will decide further actions within the framework of the project. Two companies will be chosen, one for production, the other for launch of satellite.
The final proposal will be submitted to the government for consideration within a month.
The budget of AzerSat is $80-100mln, which the Ministry plans to draw from foreign financial organizations.
AzerSat will include Europe and part of Asia, including Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran.
In 2008 Azerbaijan is to obtain space in orbit for satellite, and the satellite will be launched after several years.
The Ministry plans to sale part of capacity of satellite to aforesaid countries as Azerbaijan cannot use all capacity of satellite, only 20% or 25%.