Information Society Statistical Profiles 2009 – CIS (Commonwealth Independent States)

The fourth report of a series of regional statistical profiles on the information society prepared for the World Telecommunication Development Conference in 2010. The CIS countries include: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The region has large disparities in income levels, geography, and economic size. Russia and Ukraine have strong ICT sectors, high mobile penetration levels, and high Internet growth rates. Low-income levels like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have limited ICT penetration and moderate growth. In the CIS region as a whole, mobile cellular subscriptions reached 113% by 2008, second to Europe. However, fixed broadband penetration is only 4.6% and mobile penetration is only 0.9%, compared to the global average of 6.0%. This may be due to the fact that the ICT market is dominated by incumbent operators in many CIS countries and broadband infrastructure is limited outside of capital cities. WiMAX deployment and the launch of mobile broadband networks will likely improve high-speed Internet access in rural areas. This report highlights ICT developments in the CIS region, provides statistical indicators for each country, and features two benchmarking tools – the ITU ICT Deployment Index (IDI) and the ICT Price Basket – to analyze the region. It features a market analysis in fixed and mobile telephony, Internet, and fixed and mobile broadband.