SMS-scandal overshadows Eurovision victory for Rivas

Review of telecommunications and information technogy events from February 13 to 20.

SMS vote-rigging was the hot topic this week, as Armenian music stars and fans traded scandalous accusations of fraud in a live singing contest held on Sunday night which selected Russian-born singer of Armenian descent Eva Rivas to represent Armenia in the annual Eurovision International Song Contest. The designated jury selected the Emmy and Mihran duo as their prime choice for the contest, but SMS voting of the audience during the live show played a decisive role and Eva Rivas came on top instead. Emmi and Mihran supporters claimed their SMS votes were prevented from going through, staging a small-scale protest action in capital Yerevan and claiming unfair treatment.

February 22, 2010

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian Public TV admitted there were technical problems in an SMS vote managed by Intermob Company and audited by Grant Thornton Amyot LLC, with the presence of representatives of the singers. It is very likely, that the messages simply didn’t go through due to network congestion. Meanwhile, the claims of Emmy and Mihran fans, that only their SMS votes were prevented from going through were discarded by at least one mobile operator - Beeline, saying it would be technically impossible to filter messages before they had been sent and gone through the network of the operator. Meanwhile, Eva Rivas’ fans are also saying their SMS messages often failed too.

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The rest of this week’s news from the mobile and telecom sector are less intriguing, although at least one is potentially game-changing in the sphere. The Public Services Regulatory Commission of Armenia approved the model treaty on interconnect (calls of subscribers of one-fixed line operator to another operator) and defined set rates, according to which the interconnect is AMD 2,5 in Yerevan and AMD 10 in the regions, instead of the proposed by ArmenTel (trademark Beeline) AMD 5.2 in the capital and AMD 12 in the regions.

Beeline currently enjoys a dominant position in the Armenian market of fixed telephony services. Other companies possessing licenses for building their own alternative fixed-line networks, had been complaining, that Beeline is setting arbitrary rates, which are too expensive and render investment in this sphere meaningless.

Meanwhile, Beeline has prolonged the terms of campaign for free of charge connection to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) till March 15, 2010. The usual fee for PSTN connection is AMD 12 000 and AMD 14 400 for physical and legal persons respectively. While the company justifies this move by ‘numerous requests from customers’, it is largely an attempt to gain market share under an increasing competition from mobile telephony, which has seen exponential growth in the recent years.

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Good news came this week for the internet users throughout Armenia. The government is launching a $24 million program which will use combined fiber-optic, Wi-Max and satellite technologies to build a high-speed broadband network throughout Armenia, including rural areas on the border regions of the country. The program has launched this year with $ 900 thousand allocated for preparatory work and is set to finish within 3-5 years, the officials say.

Meanwhile, Armenian Datacom Company (ADC) has become yet another internet service provider (ISP) to announce special actions and discounts on internet tariffs. Upon signing a 1-year contract for the company’s FastClick service – a system that delivers broadband internet via the electric power grid, customers will get symmetric bandwidth at 512 Kb/s, 2048 Kb/s and 4096 Kb/s connection speeds for the price of AMD 8.000, 11.000 and 15.000 respectively, while the connection speed will double at night-time and on Sundays. The coverage of the company is quite limited - it is mainly available in downtown Yerevan and residential areas close to Barekamutyun metro station and Davitashen district, however, this move is yet another indication that the internet market is looking at further price cuts.

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Rather dubious data from Columbia based company Miniwatts Marketing Group, made headlines in the Armenian media this week. The group which offers research in Internet industry features a website called Internet World Stats, which claims the number of Armenian internet subscribers makes only 6.4 percent of the population with as few as 191 thousand people connected to the web, which puts Armenia seriously behind its neighbors by internet penetration rates. While there is no data immediately available on the total number of Armenian internet users, it is important to point out, that a similar figure was presented by the International Telecommunications Union 2 years ago and within the past two years the Armenian internet market has seen very robust growth. Even if we only consider the numbers of 3G internet users in the country (which is well over 220 thousand), and add to that the number of DSL, ADSL, WiFi, WiMax and dial-up users, the data presented by the Columbian company seems very far from reality.

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Two bits of industry news were announced this week. ‘DigiTec on wheels’ IT fair-exhibition will start on March 3 and between March and June, the portable IT exhibition will travel through most big towns in Armenia. The fair is expected to bring together representatives of 15 Armenian ICT companies. Presentation of robots, seminars and trainings are scheduled during the event.

In another interesting development, an Armenian-Indian Information Technology Center will open in autumn, 2010 in Yerevan. The operation of the new center will be financed by the Government of India. The program costs USD 1.5 million. The Center will focus on retraining and certification of IT specialists.