The network of Armenia is once again in the center of attention of the government and society. Everything started with the strange announcement of the RA Commission on regulating public services. Speaking of the name of the national security service, this commission made all telephone companies register their subscribers, starting from July 1. In past, Armentel and Viva Cell freely sold their “easy” and “alo” phone cards. Now they have to register all their subscribers. This means that the people will have to spend their time and resources to register their numbers at the phone companies so that NSS can create another database for itself. During the application of social security cards the state was at least able to find a normal justification. It was done to fight against corruption and the shadow economy. Of course, corruption was not reduced as a result. Neither was the black market reduced. Instead the state started to gather all kinds of information about citizens. But the social security database doesn’t have any information about how many cell phones each person has and most importantly our NSS doesn’t have any information about what and to whom our people are speaking. This is perhaps an unforgivable mistake and it may perhaps be fixed by November 1. And starting from July 1, phone cards will be sold only after an application about the subscriber’s passport information is filled out. The strange thing is that staring from July 1, 2005 a new operator entered into our market – Viva Cell. From then on the phone cards, which used to be sold at about 200 USD, had started to be sold very cheaply and openly. From their legal price – 14.5 thousand AMD–the price of the phone cards was reduced to 200 AMD. Viva Cell, within about two years, gained about 600 thousand subscribers. Its competitor, Armentel, has also started to offer all kinds of innovations in order to become attractive to the citizens. As a result, the number of its subscribers became 400 thousand. This means that the active mass of the population fully uses the cell phone services. This fact made it quite attractive for the state structures to keep an eye on. And the state makes the private sector collect information about subscribers and send the database to the appropriate state bodies. The private sector obeys the state demand. General Director of Viva Cell, Ralph Yirikyan, says the following, “The execution of the decision of the commission will demand very many efforts, but we will be able to comply with that in the framework of the mentioned time.” General Director of Armentel, Oleg Briznyuk, explains to journalists that they will try to fit in the timeline and that the execution of the decision of the commission will not reduce the number of their subscribers. According to him, “if the person is not a terrorist and has no intention to organize revolution in the country he has no reason to avoid anything or be scared.” Goddamn the liberal values and civic freedoms. This decision is pretty unclear for a country like Armenia, which considers tourism development one of its priorities. Every single tourist visiting Armenia will be astonished. Unlike other countries, our country will demand IDs from them when selling cell phone cards. And the tourist will realize what the Soviet Union meant – evil empire. At the dawn of the collapse of the Soviet Union everybody, including us in Liberty Square, was criticizing the values of communism and totalitarianism.
The same kind of thing was invented by communism to keep total control over the population. The government of independent Armenia wasn’t able o overcome those shortcomings of Soviet times. All the citizens of independent Armenia are registered at a certain address, just like during servitude. The supporters of this system are saying that it’s easy to track down criminals. In democratic countries only 2-3% of criminals are registered. The opposite is happening in our country. They are registering everybody and creating a database for everybody. The Russian director is right. The number of subscribers will not reduce for sure. Telephone has been no luxury but just a means of communication for quite some time. Both of the telephone companies obey the orders of the state or, in particular, the national security service. And the population has no choice either. Nowadays not having a phone has become a luxury. The state is aware of that and is trying to do its best to keep control of people’s communication. This time the NSS ordered commission on regulating public services to take care of this problem, just not to scare the society. Thank god we don’t have the habit to send our clothes to public laundries. Otherwise the NSS would order to examine every single spot on our clothes. To be honest, I am not trying to scare you; I am scared myself. I am sacred of any illogical decision, especially if it’s issued by NSS.