Good News for the Internet in Armenia

After the disasterous ArmenTel privatization deal set back the development of the Internet in Armenia by years, finally some good news. Following the buyout of ArmenTel by Vimpelcom, prices for Internet connectivity have plummeted. Until recently, costs of using a dial-up connection have been astronomical but with Beeline already offering unlimited ADSL access for 12,000 drams a month other ISPs will soon be offering similar packages.

Noyan Tapan reports that ADC will soon be offering broadband packages starting from 15,000 drams. Here’s hoping that other ISPs follow suit and offer faster access at lower costs, especially via wi-fi or cable given the still sub-standard telephone network.

YEREVAN, MAY 12, NOYAN TAPAN. Armenian-Norwegian ADC company plans to start the provision of broadband Internet “triple play” package of services through its channels to both households and small offices from June, NT correspondent was informed by the company’s commercial director Avetik Kalantarian.

In his words, the first stage of services’ testing was successful. “We have developed interesting versions with quite a good result - in terms of ensuring “last mile” connections to apartments and offices in order to make the prices more accessible as compared with the fiber optic cable connection which is more labor-consuming and quite expensive,” A. Kalantarian pointed out. He explained that two tariff plans on provision of the indicated services have been developed: with and without a restriction on the amount of data transmission. Users will be offered 5-6 various packages at prices from 15 to 40 thousand drams a month. They will differ from broadband Internet offered to
big corporate customers in that the indices of upload and download speed will not be given.

“We want all packages to be without a use restriction because we realize that by pursuing some business goals, we also solve the problem of forming an information society,” A. Kalantarian added.