Government plans to further expand IT in the educations system

Review of telecommunications and information technogy events from February 20 to 27.

The government announced plans to connect most of Armenia’s general and secondary schools to the internet and join them into a unified network by 2011. The director of National Center for Educational Technologies Areg Grigoryan said 624 schools are already connected to the world wide web with plans pending to connect 750 more schools to the internet once work on building the dedicated network is completed as part of a World Bank funded project.

March 1, 2010

PanARMENIAN.Net - Meanwhile, Grigoryan informed, that the government and the educational system in particular are moving to use the licensed version of Microsoft Corporation’s Windows 7 operating system by 2010. The RA government is currently one of the largest clients for the leading software maker’s products in Armenia, even though the company representative in Armenia claims only 30% of state agencies are using licensed software, with pirated copies of Microsoft products dominating also in the private sector.

An internet connected Mitsubishi minivan equipped with 7 computers to allow classes of 1 teacher and 6 students toured 20 communities in 9 regions of Armenia holding 12-day computer lessons for schoolchildren and their teachers. 572 students and 182 teachers have already benefited from the ‘moving computer classroom’ as it is called.

In another related news, PanARMENIAN.Net learned that the digitization of the index cards of the Armenian language literature in the RA National Library will be finished this year.

2 538 465 book titles have been included in the database since 2002.

While internet content in Armenia continues to expand, ”, Samvel Arabajyan, member of Armenia’s Public Services Regulatory Commission says 60 per cent of Armenia’s internet traffic accounts for servers in the Russian “.ru” domain. In a related note, the head of major telecom and internet provider “ArmenTel” company Igor Klimenko has emphasized there’s a need to increase Armenian content on the internet to attract more Armenian users to the Armenian websites.

According to Alexa.com statistics, odnoklassniki.ru, mail.ru, yandex.ru, rambler.ru, liveinternet.ru, vkontakte.ru are the most popular web portals of .Ru zone in Armenia.

Abajyan also revealed some interesting statistics about internet use in Armenia. Hence, the number of fixed broadband Internet subscribers grew 6-7 times compared with the last quarter of 2008. Currently, there are some 70 000 -75 000 subscribers of broadband Internet (3G, Wi-Fi, WiMax, Ethernet, DSL) in Armenia, and with the users of GPRS connection, their number will reach 1.5 million.

Growth of broadband has affected the number of Dial-up communication users – which has reduced significantly, by as much as 33% according to some estimations.

In yet another indication, that Apple’s popular iPhone will soon hit the Armenian market, Apple Inc. opened access to its on-line App Store for citizens of Armenia.

“The decision of Apple Corporation is most probably linked to first official appearance of iPhones on Armenian market,” Director of Apple Macintosh office in Armenia, Ernest Mardoyan told PanARMENIAN.Net reporter. “Armenia was the first among Transcaucasian states to use App Store services,” he added.

Orange Armenia is the company which has announced plans to introduce the iPhone as part of its services has again refused to reveal details of launch date and conditions for the phone. CEO of Orange Armenia Bruno Dutoit wrote about this in his blog answering the questions of commenters. He also said that company’ projects in relation to iPhone sales in Armenia have not changed. Bruno Dutoit did not rule out that the company may also engage in delivery of Blackberry Smartphones, since RIM (Research In Motion) Canadian manufacturing company is one of the most important partners of France Telecom Group.