U!Com preparing for fixed telephone connection

PanARMENIAN.Net - According to Project Coordinator in Georgia Anna Keshelashvili, the projects will be estimated by an international jury comprising of people, who are aware of topical social issues and have experience in working with technologies.

The idea of Social Innovation Camp arose in Great Britain, where the growing interest towards social media instruments forced leading specialists to think over their usage to overcome social problems. Only 48 hours are provided for an internet project implementation. The decision on the camp organization in Caucasus was adopted during Social Innovation Camp in Bratislava (Slovakia).

Social Innovation Camp Caucasus is organized by Georgian Institute of Public affairs and Open Society Institute.

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VivaCell-MTS, a subsidiary of Mobile TeleSystems OJSC, announced the closing of an agreement with HTC to introduce HTC smartphones, featuring the innovative Android platform. The gadgets will be soon on sale in VivaCell-MTS service centers across Armenia, the Company’s press office reported.

With this new initiative of VivaCell-MTS on bringing HTC’s stylish new smartphones to the Armenian market, VivaCell-MTS subscribers will be provided with the latest mobile technologies for their business and leisure. The introduction of the Android-powered handsets is the result of a successful partnership between VivaCell-MTS and HTC, one of the world’s leaders in mobile network technology and solutions for the high technologies consumer market.

With a sleek design and compactness, the smartphone featuring the Android platform for which it has come to be known, HTC smartphones will enable a superior mobile internet experience, for which the Android platform was designed, providing broad flexibility for personalization via the application-rich Android Market. To be available to Armenians soon, Android Market will allow quick and easy downloading of games and applications utilizing VivaCell-MTS’ fast and reliable 2G (GPRS/EDGE) and 3.5G (UMTS/HSPA) networks.

Besides, all HTC smart phones feature HTC Sense – a unique user friendly interface. HTC Sense is a user experience focused on putting people at the center by making phones work in a more simple and natural way.

“Delivering innovative state-of-the-art technologies to its subscribers is what VivaCell-MTS strives to achieve endlessly. High-speed quality mobile internet experience is as well a priority for VivaCell-MTS, so we are very excited to introduce Android-powered smart phones in Armenia. With VivaCell-MTS’ extensive, high speed and reliable 2G and 3.5G networks Armenians can enjoy a great Internet and communications experience on their Android phones,” VivaCell-MTS General Manager Ralph Yirikian said.

“Android-based devices are designed to provide users with maximum comfort and unprecedented opportunities that may be efficiently implemented depending on Internet operation,” said Andrey Kormiltsev, Country Manager, HTC Russia and CIS. “Positioning HTC brand as a leader at the market of Android-based devices, we cooperate with “Mobile TeleSystems”, major mobile service provider. Bringing together innovative HTC technologies and next-generation communications standards, Android-based smartphones with personalized user interface will deliver to Armenian users more than they may expect from their mobile devices.”

The introduction of innovative mobile handsets helps VivaCell-MTS to more widely open up all opportunities of mobile web for Armenian subscribers. With Android-powered mobile phones third-party developers are given a platform on which they can build the next wave of killer applications.

Android-powered HTC handsets have a variety of powerful mobile internet capabilities beginning with an Android-optimized Webkit browser. They also feature the popular Google™ applications, Google Maps™ and Google Search™ as well as favorites like YouTube™.

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International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary General Hamadoun Touré’s visit to Armenia took place on April 6-7. Hamadoun Touré met with RA President, Prime Minister and Transport and Communication Minister within the framework of the visit. Round table discussions, covering Armenian’s situation in telecommunications sphere as well as possibilities for its development also took place. It was declared that cooperation between Armenia and ITU will continue in the three main directions: development of possibilities, sphere’s management and tele and radio broadcasting digitization.

The RA Public Services Regulatory Commission at an April 7 meeting presented the non-geographic code 6045 to the U!Com company and the possibility to take 10 thousand numbers in that number capacity for providing fixed phone communication services. As the U!Com Director declared at an April 9 meeting with reporters, tariffs for the new phone communication have not been determined yet as the company is still solving problems of interconnect with other operators nets. The company also announced appearance of a new digital phone on the Armenian market combining possibilities of fixed and mobile network for fixed communication, having such functions as video-call and short message sending, etc. According to company representatives, the phone will be presented in 2 or 3 months. Besides, U!Com announced creation of a Data Center of its own that will serve development of Armenian content in Internet. Center’s throughput rate is 320 Gbit/sec that gives a possibility to connect with operators of up to 10 Gbit/sec. Several dozens of companies have already connected to the center. According to him, the center, in its turn, will connect to the Center of Internet-Traffic Exchange being established in Armenia at present.

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On April 8, the RA parliament approved the law On Control of Dual-Use Goods Export, Their Transit through Territory Armenia as well as Information Transmission and Results of Dual-Use Intellectual Activity. The document envisages a simplified licensing procedure and provision of permission for export of dual-use goods.

Besides, instead of the existing commission the law envisages establishment of a special responsible structure to coordinate the control. While the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE) applied to the President asking him to send the law to the parliament for revision as the amendments to the law were adopted without taking into account union’s proposals.

At present the bill has been sent to RA President Serzh Sargsyan for approval. According to the RA Constitution, the President is to sign the law within 21 days or return the bill to the National Assembly with objections or proposals demanding its new discussion. In the opinion of UITE lawyer Arkady Sahakyian, law’s main shortcoming is that the document has no exact definition for such terms as “dual-use goods” and “products of intellectual activity,” thus rather a wide spectrum of goods and services can be numbered among them.