Azerbaijani IT sector (January-August 2013)
The organisations and people of Azerbaijan were provided with information and communication services at a total cost of 985 million manat in January-August 2013, which is 7 percent more than in the same period of 2012.
Some 72.4 percent accounted for services rendered to the population for 8 months. Private individuals are the main consumers of these services.
According to the State Statistics Committee, the total amount of revenues from mobile services in the country amounted to 581.7 million manat in January-August 2013 or 59.1 percent of the rendered services. Mobile penetration level remained at the same level - 110 percent. At the same time, the mobile segment increased the volume of services by 9.2 percent, exceeding the average growth of the sector by 2.2 percentage points.
Azerbaijani mobile operator - "Bakcell" company launched a Mobile Number Portability service (MNP) in August. Subscribers of other operators may contact Bakcell customer service offices, by submitting a Sim-card and identity card. MNP service in Bakcell's network is free. The migration term from one network to another will take six days. SIM-card must be replaced while migrating to other operators' networks. However, this service is not available for SIM-cards used in Data-cards. According to the rules, the service will be available again after three months. One of the project's important components is the subscriber's migration to another operator without an outstanding bill. Otherwise, this service will not be rendered. Introducing MNP services will allow mobile users to keep their phone numbers while changing operator. Number portability means full migration of a subscriber phone number with the operator's prefix (050, 051, 055, 070 and 077).
It should be stressed that other mobile operators in Azerbaijan did not fulfill their obligations to the Communications and IT Ministry concerning the implementation of Mobile Number Portability (MNP). According to the Ministry, despite the system was technically ready for launching within a year, the operators did not fulfill technical obligations to launch services in their networks. This has caused financial damage to the ministry.
In this regard, the ministry has made a final warning to operators. The system of rendering MNP services will be coordinated by the Information-Computing Centre of Azerbaijan's Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies. The contracts have been already signed with three operators (Bakcell, Azercell and Azerfon).
All legal documents regulating the procedure in operators' networks have already been adopted. The necessary technical equipment has already been installed in the central database and test work was conducted.
