Uzbektelekom to develop fiber-optic technology to increase the Internet speed 

On December 1 last year, Uzbektelekom announced an increase in the Internet bandwidth 10 times. At the same time, over the next few months, the speed of fixed broadband and mobile Internet remained at a consistently low level.

Only by the end of April 2019, Uzbekistan in the Speedtest Global Index ranking immediately rose up to seven positions and ranked 124th in terms of fixed broadband Internet speed, which increased from 11.8 Mbit/s to 13.5 Mbit/s.

Responding to a question about when Uzbekistan will approach the speed of the Internet in developed countries, the acting commercial director of Uzbektelekom Alisher Zufarov noted that it is necessary to develop connection technologies for this and increase the number of users.

“If you compare us with developed countries, you need to understand that they have long been completely switched to optics. Last year, we promised to stretch a total of over 220 km of fiber-optic communication lines across the country. At today's reporting press conference, we announce that more than 5,000 km have already been laid. Just imagine what this distance is,” Alisher Zufarov said.

He also said that at the moment, users connected to the Internet using ADSL technology are about the same in number to those using optical communication. Recently, the company introduced a new unlimited data plan with a speed of 100 Mbit/s.

“We are interested in moving customers to optics. We abandoned unlimited Internet at a speed of 1 Mbit/s, we want to refuse from 2.4 Mbit/s, so that the lowest speeds should be 40, 80 or even 100 Mbit/s. But this requires fiber-optic technology. Therefore, we are now directing all our forces to the development of these technologies,” the acting director of Uzbektelekom said.

Such an update of technology takes time, Zufarov summed up.

Earlier, it was reported that Uzbektelekom has reduced tariffs on the Internet channels for operators and providers down to 70,000 soums.