Bakytzhan Sagintayev instructs to take measures to provide cities and villages with broadband internet access

August 14 at a meeting of the Government chaired by Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev, the implementation of projects to provide broadband internet access to rural settlements, to develop 5G and data centers was reviewed.

Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev noted that providing broadband internet access to towns and villages is a time-consuming requirement.

"Providing broadband Internet access is not only our requirement. We must not lag behind, the necessary documents are adopted, there are all decisions. This is the imperative of the times, on the agendas of many states. It is necessary to work actively. The main problem is the internet speed in the regions: there is communication, the internet is there, but the speed is very low. This not only concerns business, but also is the need of the population," the Prime Minister said and instructed the Ministry of Information and Communications, in conjunction with state bodies, to take measures to ensure high-speed internet.

The control over execution is assigned to Deputy Prime Minister Askar Zhumagaliyev. He, in turn, reported that the work on providing rural broadband internet access is actively carried out, all issues on this program are being addressed.

"By the end of2018, we need to start providing access to broadband internet. The introduction of 5G in 2019, we plan to conduct in the pilot mode. When the pilot regime is over, a final decision will be made. We studied the most advanced experience, including countries such as Great Britain and Estonia. We will develop data centers to store data and process it. Programs to provide broadband internet will be kept under strict control," Zhumagaliyev said.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the goal of the state program Digital Kazakhstan is to accelerate the pace of development of the economy and to improve the living standards through the use of digital technologies and to ensure the creation of a digital economy in the long term. One of the objectives of the program is the development of telecommunications infrastructure, in this regard, a number of projects are implemented: broadband access (broadband access) to villages, 5G and data centers.

The implementation of the project "Provision of broadband access to rural communities of the Republic of Kazakhstan in fiber-optic communication technology" will allow to connect state authorities and budgetary institutions to telecommunication services in 1,249 rural settlements of the country using fiber-optic communication technology with a total communication capacity of at least 50 Mbit / s, which contributes to the elimination of the digital inequality between urban and rural areas.

The current world practice shows that new generations of cellular communication standards are developed every 10 years, so in 1981 they introduced the first standard — 1G, in 1992 — 2G, in 2001 — 3G and at the end of 2010 — 4G, implementation of the 5G standard is expected by 2020.

Minister of Information and Communications Dauren Abayev reported that the introduction of mobile communication 5G in Kazakhstan will become possible after the adoption of the 5G standard by the International Telecommunication Union, in which frequency bands and technical parameters will be determined. The adoption of this decision is planned at the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019 in Egypt. Only after the adoption by the International Telecommunication Union of the standard 5G, the manufacturers of telecommunications equipment will begin mass production of the corresponding devices operating in the accepted standard.

In turn, in the second quarter of 2019 it is planned to conduct pilot testing of mobile communication technology 5G.

For pilot testing of mobile communication 5G, work was done on frequency selection in Astana, Almaty and Akmola, Almaty regions and in coordination with the Ministry of Defense. In the near future, it is necessary to identify a telecom operator for pilot testing of mobile communication technology 5G.

To place information systems of state bodies in commercial data centers, it is proposed to divide the list of information systems into two groups according to classes in accordance with the Rules for the classification of information objects.

The project "Creation of a technological analysis of large data" is an infrastructure platform for the development of the e-government and provision of capacities for future digitalization projects from the plan of measures of the State Program Digital Kazakhstan.

Kazakhtelecom plans to provide 6,212 rural settlements with a population of 7,622,927 people with broadband Internet access until the end of 2021.

In his report, Chairman of Kazakhtelecom JSC Kuanyshbek Yessekeyev said that the company participates in a competitive project to develop and provide broadband high-speed Internet. In the connection range there are 828 rural settlements that cover 4.8 million people.

"The total number of fiber-optic lines that will be built in the next three years is 14,217 km. To them it is planned to connect 2,496 state bodies, the average cost of investments is about 50 billion tenge,” Yessekeyev informed.

In addition, according to him, within the framework of the development of 5G, Kazakhtelecom is currently working with manufacturers on providing hardware and software to begin testing 5G, and developing a test plan for 5G. As a result, it was confirmed that the equipment and software were ready to be provided by one of the vendors to begin testing.

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