NUR-SULTAN – More than 200 remote villages will receive broadband internet connection by Sept. 1, reported the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry press service.
Fibre optic line construction in villages in the Kyzylorda, Pavlodar, Turkestan and Zhambyl regions will be completed in three months, giving 201 villages access to broadband internet. In particular, 223 schools, 191 hospitals and 117 akimats (administrations) will be connected.
The project is being completed within the Digital Kazakhstan state programme, with the aim of providing villages with high-quality internet connection. The list of priority areas is based on how remote the village is from the district centre and whether it has at least 500 residents and educational and medical organisations.
The project, resulting from an October 2018 agreement among Kazakhtelecom, SilkNetCom consortium, Transtelecom and the Ministry of Information and Communication, specifies more than 20,000 kilometres of fibre-optic communication lines will be installed. As a result, 3,718 state bodies and state organisations (hospitals, schools, local executive bodies, emergency services, defence facilities and law enforcement agencies) will have access to high-speed internet. The project was launched in 2018 and communication services were provided to 177 government agencies by the end of that year.
According to the project, private partners will provide communication services for government agencies and public-sector institutions by constructing telecommunications infrastructure with a total bandwidth of at least 50 Mbit/s. The infrastructure is also expected to stimulate developing mobile operators, according to the press release.
The work will continue in accordance with the schedule and partner’s obligations.
The current rate of internet access among Kazakh citizens is 81.3 percent, according to Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry’s telecommunications committee chairperson Vitaly Yaroshenko.
