2006 - Year of the Cell Phone
My reflection of 2006 is only 17 days late. I figured I had to get through all of the visiting and during my visiting to various cities I would ask my friends and business associates to reflect back on 2006. It was a New Year celebration of interesting conversations.
From my conversations, I would characterize 2006 as the year of the cell phone. Previous to 2006, it was quicker for me in many cases to send a driver with a message to some areas in Lori, Tavush or Gegharkunik than to try to call. Many of the businessmen in those areas we inaccessible which led to tremendous inefficiencies in our work. This past year with Viva Cell increasing its network and reaching some harder to reach areas, we have seen an explosions of cell phones.
It seems that most everyone is wired now in rural Armenia that is within reach of a cell tower. I had a lovely conversation with a family outside of Dilijan that was counting the days until the Viva Cell tower would be operational so that they could have phone service as well as internet as they can connect their computer to the cell phone to send email. Their home phone will work only when the lines are dry, the Moon is at a 45 degree angle to the house and you have dialed for more than 30 minutes trying to get a dial tone.
Communication is mandatory for rural Armenia to improve. Although the oligopoly of Armentel and Viva Cell still restricts the market, we can only hope that Vimpelcom will do as they say and push the bar for phone service. Right now, I would be willing to pay for voice mail, easy access internet for document faxing and an online phone book. Viva Cell already has some of this but it is not up the expected quality for business use.
I am excited to see what will come in 2007. With Vimpelcom releasing Armentel’s monopoly on internet access, will we see WiFi-Max in Armenia that would allow for cheap wifi enabled calls using a voice-over-IP product? Rural Armenia is ripe for technological expansion! The money is there for the computers and people will use the internet provided it is cheap (meaning moving away from the per-megabyte model and moving to a flat service fee model). The change is exciting. However, I wish I could find a way to turn off all these awful rings of Russian songs that are so intrusive!
Voice over IP , I think is a no, as today Armentel announces it is disconnecting all such companies operating in Armenia, claiming they are “stealing money from its pocket”
I Hope this isn’t the first of many restrictions that the new owners of Armentel will impose.
I will be writing a post on this situation so wont go on too much
Comment by Harmick — 1/17/2007 @ 4:52 am
Harmick, yes, I saw the news tonight with the lovely Armentel Director discussing the “internet phones”. However, VoIP is different and easily used. I use it for all of my communication with Europe and America. It works well provided the connection exists. Armentel will not be able to separate VoIP traffic and internet traffic while it ends its internet monopoly.
Just think: Armenia is blanketed in wifi style connections (aka radio modems) that are easily connected to. The revenue stream is amazing as the demand is there. The overall economic impact would be tremendous!!!
Comment by Burnell — 1/17/2007 @ 5:23 am
You are correct, I didnt think it through properly I assumed you meant VoIP in terms of connections via phones. But you are correct, short of blocking ports, ( censorship then i guess ) Voip is virtually unstoppable. You have almost written the text of my next post
Comment by Harmick — 1/17/2007 @ 5:33 am
I’m kind of interested. Azerbaijan and Georgia reached 2 million and 1 million cellphones respectively long ago, and Georgia is apparently third in leading the way in terms of 3G technologies in the former Soviet space.
See here and here.
Yet, has the explosion of cellphones there contributed to significant rural expansion or do things like irrigation, fertile soil, roads etc mean more. The MCC with its MCA funding seem to think so.
Sure, if you have tourists an businesses in the region, cellphones are useful, but my understanding is that mobile phones took off for one main reason only in the former Soviet space and you explain that so well above.
That is, the landlines sucked and prices were cheap. Okay, so that’s as it is, but I don’t think that more investment is going to occur in the regions unless they’re actually something to invest in with cheap transit routes out of the country.
Tax incentives would also make a huge difference, although that doesn’t seem to have done much for Gyumri after the earthquake.
Still, the internet can only get better, but I wouldn’t expect the country to get hi-tech so quickly. Even in Georgia where ADSL costs $35/month, ADSL still costs $200/month in Batumi.
Besides, after all the elation over OTE selling out, another story got hidden away in there. Azerbaijan and Armenia almost got cut off from the internet entirely because of outstanding debts to the tune of $1.7million.
See here.
In 2002 I visited Javakheti in Georgia and saw almost every Armenian even in Georgia’s poorest region, including pensioners, with mobile phones. However, don’t think it made any difference to them in terms of economic development.
We can, but hope, I suppose, and while communication with the regions is important, there are far more serious problems that need to be overcome. Still, as Armenia is a small country, roads and proper voice communication can help, but what about the rest?
Comment by Onnik Krikorian — 1/17/2007 @ 9:39 am
I feel strongly that communication is the basis for economic expansion especially for a country in Armenia’s state which is poor in natural resources, is land locked and has two neighbors that do not care for it. Armenia will never be a huge producer of anything unless it is intangible. That “intangible” is knowledge and information and I hope that Armenians, especially in the rural areas of the east, will embrace sharing information as that is a first step in building more intrinsic knowledge in the society.
Cell phones do not bring knowledge but they bring efficiency. In turn the efficiency builds wealth and that wealth is spent on education and more capacity to share information. Will we see wifi-max this year? Probably, only in my dreams. However, with increased internet competition, we should again see efficiencies.
In closing, I pray for reasonable broadband. Currently, my business incurs over $250 a month in internet charges in the three most rural areas of the country. It would be half that in Yerevan but just to get service in most places is a base fee of $70. What I would pay for portable, satellite internet that is always on and not subject to power outages in the marzes surrounding Yerevan.
Comment by Burnell — 1/17/2007 @ 5:38 pm