Why Internet is so costly in Belarus?
Towards the end of the last week, Beltelecom announced that Belarus enjoyed the cheapest telephone communication among the former Soviet republics. The telephone tariff is Br8.05 per minute plus a monthly service fee of Br1660.
In Russia, service fee amounts to Br10315. In Ukraine and Estonia, service fee is almost Br9000, while amateurs of phone talks pay Br52.9 per minute.
Moldovans pay Br4222 as a monthly service fee plus Br16.8 per minute. In Latvia, there is no fixed service fee, but one minute costs Br96.7.
Here are other figures. Connecting to Internet through ADSL (1Mbits/sec) offered by Beltelecom costs Br2,170,980 ($1012) in Belarus.
Journalists from the Business Online magazine calculated that this was almost 30 times more expensive than in Russia, 47 times more expensive than in Latvia and 50 times more expensive than in Poland and 55 times more expensive than in Lithuania.
ASDL can be bought cheaper from another provider, but the quality product is sold only by Beltelecom.
So it turns out that with the cheapest phone network Belarus has the most expensive ASDL at the post-Soviet space. Aliaksej Fedarenchyk, the spokesman for Beltelecom, sees no paradox in this situation.
“Having declared that it promotes a socially oriented policy, the government demands that telephone talks are affordable for the population. People in Belarus have already got used to these tariffs, so nobody will dare to increase them now.
Naturally, if the local phone networks are loss-making, this should be compensated in some ways. Therefore, Internet in Belarus is more expensive than in the neighboring countries. This allows us to upgrade the existing networks,” he told the European Radio for Belarus.
If crossed subsidies did not exist, the costs of the internet would have been different. Aliaksej Fedarynchyk names yet another factor that influences on ASDL costs.
“We should not forget that Beltelecom employs 26500 people. Naturally, this contributes to the costs as well. Neither the company nor the government will sack all those people in order to reduce internet costs,” he said.
Andrej Ivanou, the director of the Open Contact, the pioneer company at the Belarusian internet providing market, recalls early 1990s when a commuted access to the electronic mail box cost $3.5 per hour.
Mr Ivanou describes ASDL tariffs in Belarus as normal, pointing out that they keep dropping all the time. He also warns those who wish to connect to a speedy internet against swindling which was common several years ago.
“ASDL is a technology that provides access at the “last mile” leg, i.e. from the client to the nearest telephone stations. You can have a cheep and high speed at this leg to the provider’s resources. But after that you could face a mess.
Some young providers offered 128Kbits/sec at the market. One hundred people connect to the service, but nobody cares then that all those people end up with the limit of 256Kbits/sec,” Andrej Ivanou said.
Sharing his opinion on why few ASDL users have to cover the low tariffs for phone lines, Mr Ivanou said the following: “I prefer when everything costs its real money.”.
