But Internet is a separate business field and for its development there are serious prosperities in Armenia. Concerning this we spoke with the general director of “Arminco” Armenian information organization Andranik Alexanyan. This organization is one of the biggest ones in this field.
Internet as a business field doesn’t develop well in Armenia. The reason is not the low level of our purchasing power. The situation is very unique here. Mr. Alexanyan said that the development of this field was mostly depended from the price policy of “Armentel”. In all countries prices of all products and services are formed by the market influence. Armenia is famous with its expensive prices for Internet service like in Africa (Armenia is approximately in the 150th place). According to Mr. Alexanyan private individuals have to pay about 50 USD for Internet connection per month. This mark is very high for Armenia. The reason for this kind of policy is clear: “the mafia of sirtaki-dancers” has monopolistic positions, and they don’t care about the interests of people.
The development of this field also depends on the quality of technical facilities. The head of “Arminco” company says that they can import high quality technical facilities but they can’t work with Armentel in Armenia with these facilities. Besides the fact that we don’t have many services that are widespread in the world, the Internet connection quality level is too low. This means that even in case there is demand, there will be no supply.
“Old generations may remember well that before TV sets didn’t have any remote controllers. There was a period when people didn’t buy TV sets with remote controllers, because they were afraid not to be able to use and handle them. Armentel wants us to use the TV sets of 70s when we are living in the 21st century”, -said Mr. Alexanyan and noted that Armentel prevents the field from development. The reason is that the Internet is a source of living for a lot of people (Arminco has about 100 employees, there are a lot of Internet clubs, a lot of companies use their services), because in all cases they will use their services even out of the market principles and prices.
One of the reasons that this field doesn’t develop is also the fact that few people can use computers. This problem is clearer in Marzes. “Why can’t the citizens of Marzes use Internet? Is this only because of the fact that we are in business relations with Greece?”, – said Mr. Alexanyan.
According to him if Internet is business now, in several years it will be a necessity like phones and other relative things.
Mr. Alexanyan also spoke about another problem of Internet users. When using Internet, very often, different pages with attractive suggestions appear on the screen. Mr. Alexanyan is sure that this is caused by the bad quality of the service of Armentel and petitions everyone to ignore those offers, otherwise people may have financial losses.
Mr. Alexanyan said that this field was very important and that in case of creating good substructures Armenia might have serious positions in the world and could be very competitive.