ArmenTel to connect 376 villages to wireless broadband internet

YEREVAN, January 27. / ARKA /. ArmenTel telecommunications company (trading as Beeline) will provide 376 rural communities across Armenia with wireless broadband Internet this year, Gevorg Gevorgyan, head of a department at Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) overseeing telecoms, said today.

He said under its license the company has to upgrade or replace telephone networks in remote areas until September with modern wired technologies that will enable provision of wireless broadband Internet.

Samvel Arabajyan, a member of PSRC, said using wireless technologies is more appropriate both in terms of modernization cost and quality of service in view of little population in remote mountain regions. He said wireless technology can increase the bandwidth to 512 Kb/s.

"Wireless access is the best option for providing remote mountainous villages with high-quality broadband Internet, « he said.

In an interview with ARKA news agency, ArmenTel CEO Andrei Pyatakhin said new solutions allow to provide remote settlements with fast and high quality Internet.

"Now subscribers in more than 300 villages use fixed line connection, provided through wireless technology CDMA, because the fixed lines were actually destroyed when we began installing CDMA and we needed to restore communication as quick as possible,»  said Pyatakhin.

He said now some 60,000 subscribers use fixed communication services through CDMA. In late 2014 ArmenTel had over 800,000 fixed line subscribers and 150,000 subscribers to fixed broadband Internet.

ArmenTel is a subsidiary of Russian VimpelCom providing fixed and mobile communications as well as high-speed Internet.-0-