According to the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee, the information and communication services worth 1.388.1 billion manat were rendered to the organisations and people of Azerbaijan in January-November 2013, which is 9.4 percent more than in the same period of 2012.
Some 72.3 percent of the total volume of information and communication services accounted for services rendered to the population.
Around 59.2 percent of the total amount of revenues fell to the mobile services. The total amount of revenues from mobile services in the country amounted to 821.7 million manat in January-November or 15.2 percent more than in the same period of 2012.
Aztelekom Production Association under the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies will complete providing over 200 Azerbaijani villages with telephones by the end of the year. Some 40 villages have been already provided with telephones. The work is underway in this direction. The project envisages the efficient use of available numbers in accordance with the needs of the population.
The broadband Internet penetration level among households in Aztelekom production association's network exceeds 17 percent in the regions. Currently, around 26 broadband Internet users fall to every 100 people in the regional telecommunications nodes of the state operator.
According to the production association, if the total number of connections taking into account the ports of private service providers as of late 2012 amounted to 117,000 units, then as of late November 2013 the number of broadband connections increased by 53.8 percent and reached 180,000. Around 100,000 of the total number of broadband connections accounted for AztelekomNet state Internet provider.
According to the plans of the state operator, it is planned to reconstruct the regional telecommunication nodes with a total capacity of 300,000 units until 2015. This will increase the numbering capacity of the regional automatic telephone exchanges to 600,000 units and increase the number of ports of broadband Internet to more than 500,000 units.
The coverage of telecommunication nodes of the Baku Telephone Communication production association under the Communications and IT Ministry by Next Generation Network (NGN) technology has reached 70 percent. According to the production association, the coverage of the state operator's telecommunication nodes by NGN technology has been increased by 16.6 percent since the beginning of the year.
Currently, the state operator plans to reconstruct several automatic telephone exchanges of the capital on the basis of this technology. This will increase the numbering capacity of the telephone network and render IP-telephony, broadband Internet and IP-TV along with traditional communication services.
The transition in the NGN network is one of the priorities with which the operator intends to stimulate the growth of new services segment in the long term.
Currently, the total capacity in the operator's network exceeds 800,000 numbers.
е-signature
In November 2013, the total number of electronic-digital signatures (EDS) issued in Azerbaijan by the National Certification Services Centre increased by 1 percent, reaching 16,584 units as of December 1, the Information Computing Centre of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies said.
According to the Information Computing Centre, the number of electronic-digital signature owners has increased by more than sevenfold in Azerbaijan since early 2013.
In November, the National Certification Services Centre issued 169 digital signature cards or by 63.4 percent less than the number of electronic-digital signatures issued in October.
Some 12,232 units of the total number of issued electronic-digital signatures accounted for state agencies, 704 units were issued to legal entities and 3,648 to citizens.
Some 270 services of the total number of approved electronic services (425) are available on the e-government portal (e-gov.az).
The total number of e-services available on the Azerbaijani government's websites is 448.
e-commerce
According to the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee, as of January-November 2013, the e-commerce market volume in Azerbaijan amounted to 2.3 million manat.
The total volume of retail e-commerce increased by 1.6 times in Azerbaijan compared to the same period of 2012.
The legal and physical entities engaged in e-commerce and who are also buyers of goods and services are the participants of e- commerce market.
Around 83 percent of goods purchased by the Azerbaijani population in electronic form were bought by legal entities and 17 percent - by physical entities. Around 90.4 percent of the e-commerce market turnover accounted for non-food products.
The total volume of retail trade amounted to 17.2 billion manat in Azerbaijan for the period. The sales of consumer goods increased by 9.7 percent compared to the same period of 2012.
More than a half (51.7 percent) of this volume fell to foodstuffs. The share of non-food goods was 48.3 percent increasing by four percentage points.