Kazakhstan: home of £11,000 broadband

 

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Posted on 31 Jul 2007 at 11:33

If you thought the cost of internet access in the UK was a bit steep, spare a thought for the residents of the oil-rich republic of Kazakhstan.

An unlimited 1.5Mb/sec connection in the home of Borat costs a staggering £1,660 per month. And installation plus the modem costs an extra £200.

£11,000 will buy you a 6Mb/sec connection. That's roughly a thousand times what it costs in western Europe and around 55 times the average monthly wage, according to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which compiled the figures.

Dial-up is much cheaper, just £55 per month for unlimited access, dropping to around £20 for pay-as-you-go access that OSCE says would encompass just basic email exchange without attachments and occasional web browsing.

And yet the Kazakh authorities hailed 2006 price cuts which increased the number of internet users.

"The first serious drop in prices for internet access was part of a company strategy to increase the number of users; 2.7% of the population used the internet at the beginning of the year, but now 4% are active users," claims Askar Zhumagaliev, head of the Information and Communications Agency.

OSCE says that this 4% is primarily corporate users. Individual citizens are restricted to occasional dial-up home access, limited free access at schools and universities and internet cafés "from time-to-time".

Kazakhstan has strict laws governing media content but it has certainly found another highly effective way of restricting access to internet content.

"Those who think it's impossible to control the internet can continue living in the world of illusions," Information Minister Yermukhamet Yertysbayev told the country's Vremya newspaper.

As for Borat, the Kazakhstan authorities shut down his .kz website in December 2005.

Author: Simon Aughton