BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 4. The median speed of mobile internet in Kazakhstan reached 22.6 Mbps in September 2022, which is 14.5 percent more than in the same month the previous year, Trend reports citing Finprom.kz.
For comparison: in Russia, this figure amounted to 21.4 Mbps. Among the Central Asian countries in terms of mobile internet speed Kazakhstan is followed by Kyrgyzstan (19.6 Mbps), then Uzbekistan (15.8 Mbps), then by a wide margin - Tajikistan (7.9 Mbps). Data for Turkmenistan in September isn't presented, the latest data was recorded only in May of this year: 5 Mbps.
The median speed of mobile internet in the world in September 2022 amounted to 33.2 Mbps, with Norway, the UAE and Qatar becoming leaders. The Speedtest Global Index moved from the average broadband Internet download speed, which was used earlier, to the median as more indicative for the majority.
The share of internet users, including mobile connections, aged from six to 74 amounted to 92.9 percent in Kazakhstan in 2021, which is 4.7 percent more than in 2020.
In addition, the terrain gap has been significantly reduced. Thus, in rural areas of Kazakhstan, the indicator increased from 85.5 percent in 2020 to 90.7 percent in 2021 and in urban areas - from 90.1 percent to 94.4 percent, which reduced the gap from 4.6 percent to 3.7 percent between the areas. These are excellent indicators for a country with such a huge and so unevenly populated territory.
The "250+" project, which provides the coverage of broadband access services for all settlements with a population of more than 250 people, played a significant role in the digitalization of the rural area in Kazakhstan. Furthermore, mobile operators in Kazakhstan deployed and upgraded the network of base stations not only within the framework of the "250+" project but also beyond their obligations.
During the open house day of the Telecommunications Committee of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan informed that, according to the updated data of telecommunications operators, 5,000 and 6,400 settlements were provided with broadband access to the internet. Improvement of the quality of mobile internet is provided in 768 villages, work has already been carried out in 645 villages, and it's planned to improve the quality in another 123 settlements by the end of 2022.
With the growth of mobile internet speed in Kazakhstan, traffic consumption is also growing, which is already significantly higher compared to countries such as Türkiye, Singapore, Italy, Belgium, etc. Such indicators are due, among other things, to significant capital investments in the telecom sector. Thus, the indicator for the traffic consumption amounted to 62.6 billion tenge ($136.2 million) from January through July 2022, and 128.6 billion tenge ($75 million) for the whole of 2021. The vast majority of investments in the sector are provided by telecom operators' own funds.