Azerbaijani IT market has been experiencing dynamic growth since early 2012. According to the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee, the volume of information and communication services rendered to the organizations and people in Azerbaijan in January-September totaled 1 billion manat. The rate of growth of this sector over the past period in comparable prices amounted to 16.7 percent.
About 72.3 percent of the total volume fell to the share of services rendered to the population. About 59.8 percent of the income received from the communication services fell to the share of mobile telephony. The volume of income received by the mobile sector increased by 13.9 percent and hit 395.8 million manat compared to 2011.
Today, three GSM-operators: Bakcell, Azercell, Azerfon operate in Azerbaijan. There are no changes in the number of mobile phone users for the beginning of the year. Every 100 people account for 110 phone.
At the same time the volume of traffic consumed through the public telephone network in Azerbaijan reduced by 30-35 per cent on a monthly basis. It is a significant figure that today is a big challenge for the operators of traditional telephone services, including Aztelekom. One way out of this situation is the development of broadband access, building a Next Generation Network (NGN). It is necessary to develop the optical infrastructure. Much work has been implemented in this area. The republic laid the optic backbone for theTAE (Trans-Asia-Europe), the length of which exceeds 1000 kilometres and which is connected to about 70 per cent of the regional centres of the country.
Plans of Aztelekom include the coverage of the remaining regional centres which contain1128 electronic exchanges, by optic communication lines by the year end. It was planned to lay an optical cable line length of 2500 kilometres as part of the project. Two thousand kilometres of cable has been laid since the beginning of the work, undertaken for the project. The expansion of infrastructure and NGN optical networks provides impetus and opportunity to develop and deploy new telecommunications services based on it.
The next line of development is the construction of transport Gigabit Ethernet networks. Some work has already been carried out by the production association. The matter is the 10 gigabyte ring infrastructure (AzDATACOM network), to which all districts of the country are connected.
As of the first nine months, associations and enterprises under the Azerbaijani Communications and IT Ministry received revenues worth $273.4 million manat, or 10.3 percent more than in the same period of last year. These organizations paid 31.5 million manat to the state budget in January-September, and 11.6 million manat to the State Social Protection Fund.
ICT sector and postal services income increased by 18.2 percent to 1.068.3 billion manat for the first nine months compared to the same period of last year.
The pace of growth in the ICT sector of the republic for the last period was 17.8 percent, the telecommunications sector - 19.2 percent, IT sector - 3.8 percent, and the postal sector - 14.2 percent compared to 2011.
According to ministry statistics, at present, the total number of phones, is on average 18.6 units per 100 people across the country, and the number of computers is 20 units per 100 people.
The penetration rate of the Internet is 65 percent, and mobile communication is 110 percent. More than 30 percent are broadband connections.
Volume of internet traffic entering the Azerbaijan decreased by 51.9 million minutes in the first nine months compared to the same period last year, reaching 494.5 million minutes. Volume of outgoing traffic increased by 8.9 million minutes, and amounted to 142.4 million minutes.
Over the past period, the number of international telephone channels, increased by 269 units and reached 9,385 units. Capacity of international Internet channels, increased by 2.2 times and reached 200 Gb / s compared to 2011.
Total investments in the ICT sector amounted to 218.4 million manat in Jan.-Sept., which is 1.5 times more than in 2011 and hit 2.2 percent of the total investment volume. According to the ministry, the amount of investments made by enterprises and bodies of the ministry for the last period was 89.2 million manat.
As of the first nine months, around 30 new automatic telephone exchanges were put into operation, while five automatic telephone exchanges were upgraded. The number of ADSL ports increased by 58,122 units.
The operations were conducted to install 35 TV and radio transmitters. Around 17 new post offices were built. Three of which are located in the territory of Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
The capacity of the public telephone network increased by 11,232 units. According to the ministry's statistics, at present, numbering capacity of the automatic telephone exchanges across the country reached 1.74 million units.
During the reporting period, the operations were carried out to lay fiber-optic cable line with a length of 325.2 kilometers. Most regions of the country joined it.