STRUGGLE OVER INTERNET ACCESS DEVELOPING IN UZBEKISTAN
Josh Machleder: 3/12/02

Uzbek President Islam Karimov, currently on a visit to the United States, has drawn criticism for his administration's crackdown on freedom speech and access to information. But the experience of UzPak, the state-sponsored Internet service provider, shows that containing the global flow of information is largely beyond the Uzbek government's ability to control.

A 1999 legislative directive entrusted UzPak with control over all international online traffic in Uzbekistan. But state controls are easily circumvented by independent providers, and now UzPak fears that an increasingly competitive Internet market in Uzbekistan will cause it to go bankrupt.

Since the legislature passed Resolution 52 on February 5, 1999, all Internet service providers (ISPs) have had to route their online information through the state network to access international traffic. Technically, this would enable UzPak to block certain sites, such as foreign sites from opposition parties (like www.birlik.net). Indeed, the state-sponsored agency sees this form of censorship as part of its mission.

"The government has decreed that UzPak should hold the informational borders of the country," said the vice-director of UzPak, Mr. V. L. Steinberg at a roundtable of ISPs in Tashkent on February 11. However, Steinberg quietly admits that enforcing the resolution is difficult. Independent ISPs are easily able to access international traffic through alternative channels, such as satellite connections.

In general, ISPs only use UzPak's lines to send messages out, since they are much cheaper than the illegally installed technology that helps them bring global information into the network. Independent companies such as Naytov and Sarkor have also used other outgoing channels allowing them to provide better quality and cheaper services than UzPak.

These ISPs claim that they are only trying to recoup their investment. Their tariffs for connections into UzPak's network reportedly run twice the international average. As a result, providers who would go through UzPak would have to charge high prices that they say depress the development of Internet use in Uzbekistan. According to the Council on Economic Research, between 150,000 and 200,000 Uzbeks out of a national population of 25 million use the Internet.

Other providers say it isn't fair that UzPak should develop its own network on their backs. At a recent roundtable discussion, a representative from one ISP confronted UzPak's representatives. The ISP representative complained that "we pay the money which you use for your development as a commercial structure." More such insubordination could threaten UzPak's financial future.

Smaller ISPs want the monopoly to simply provide wholesale international access and to stop competing with them for individual customers. "I understand that a large responsibility has been imposed on UzPak," says Shukhrat Shinazarov, from Intal Telecom. "On the one hand, it is a commercial organization. On the other hand, it should act as a communication center providing access to the international networks, [with discretion regarding] issues of informational security." He said that a company responsible for monitoring the Internet "should not also be a provider."

Some say that Resolution 52 and UzPak's monopoly on international connectivity hinders the development of the Internet by stifling competition, and thus keeping tariffs on Internet access unnaturally high. As a consequence, the Internet is generally inaccessible to the population in Uzbekistan. This directly conflicts with the government's initiative for developing online access that was announced last May, which establishes broader public Internet access as a priority.

Karimov trumpeted this priority last May. "If we want to present ourselves as ready for the 21st century," he said, "we have to implement the Internet." But some complain that high prices are making such implementation impossible. "Prices for using the Internet [in other countries] are constantly decreasing, whereas in Uzbekistan, the tendency is the opposite," said one provider.

According to Steinberg, UzPak works as the national operator for providers in Uzbekistan, helping to provide access to a quality channel to global networks, but should not be in the business of providing to individual subscribers. However, he threatened some old-fashioned retaliation at the providers' roundtable. "If providers will continue the policy of using alternative channels, then UzPak will initiate an aggressive policy to bring subscribers to its network," he said.

UzPak is in sore need of income to honor a credit arrangement made in November 2001 with the United States' Eximbank. That agreement made UzPak eligible for a $5 million loan to buy technical equipment for the modernization and development of its data transmission network. Under the feasibility study that made this loan possible, it was expected that all providers would access foreign channels through UzPak, in accordance with Resolution 52. "But it is not happening," Steinberg said. It is well known that UzPak's channels have very low capacities. It receives data at 3.5 Mbytes/sec and sends it at .7mbytes/sec, speeds too slow for Uzbekistan's Internet requirements.

Some sources expect that UzPak, in an attempt to squelch its competitors, will monitor the data going to addresses that bypass the state provider and will send this data to a state inspection committee. However, the state inspection committee has so far done nothing more than issue letters of warning.

The battle will affect Uzbekistan's international reputation. In a 2001 report, the organization Reporters Sans Frontiers called Uzbekistan an "enemy of the Internet." The report portrayed private ISPs as being at the mercy of "the telecom ministry, which is responsible for chastising those who speak out against the government."

Editor's Note: Josh Machleder is the country director of Internews Uzbekistan.

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Posted March 12, 2002 © Eurasianet
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