International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has published a report on “Measuring the informative society” which captures the level of advancement of information and communication technologies of countries worldwide.
Here Armenia ranks the 72th receiving 3,87 points in 10-point grading scale. In comparison to 2008 Armenia has moved for 11 points in the rating. “In recent two years many countries have had positive changes in this sphere both in absolute and relative terms. Among such dynamic countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Portugal, Cyprus, etc.” is stated in the report. The other countries in the Southern Caucasus, such as Azerbaijan and Georgia concede Armenia, by holding the 74th and 77th levels accordingly. Turkey is the 59th and Iran – 87th. CIS leader is Russia, after which succeed Belarus and Moldova. However, it would be right to mention, that apart from exact rating the ITU releases a separate rating as well, in terms of informative basket availability (see Table 1). So there we can find countries with cheapest informative basket. Three components are included in the basket: rate of fixed telecommunication, rate of mobile communication and rate of broadband internet used widely. Also, the content list is made not only based on the fixed rate of mobile communication service in USD currency for instance, but it is viewed as a percentage of gross national income of a particular service individually. For example, according to statistics in 2010 the average yearly price of fixed-line telephony services in Latvia is approximately 124 $. In Armenia the price is much cheaper, about 50%. However in Latvia the income per person is 12.390 % and in Armenia it is 3100 %. Thus, the agency thinks that the fixed-line telephone services in Latvia are more affordable for a Latvian (as it makes 1.1% of GNI) than for an Armenian in Armenia (1,6% of GNI).
In the first table from the ITU rating we have picked out statistics of the former USSR countries (except Turkmenistan). As you see Armenia is in the 10th place among 14 countries with 5,9 index. And in the whole list Armenia is in 102th place among 152 countries. Those who are interested must know that in terms of the affordability of informative basket Monaco is in the first place (with 0,2 index), Niger is the most expensive one (71, 6) The average index of all the 152 countries for 2010 is 12. Thus, we may say that the affordability of Informative basket in Armenia is on the average stage.
Based on the data presented by the Agency, we tried to calculate the cost of Informative Basket Service in the CIS counties only in USD currency. According to that calculation, in Armenia fixed telephone communication service costs 4.13 USD. We are in the 9th place among CIS countries as per that index. In terms of mobile communication service Armenia is in the 6th place among the CIS countries. Average monthly rate of mobile communication service is 8.7 USD. The cheapest service is offered by Tajikistan, which makes 1.8 USD. The worst index has been compiled only regarding internet service. As we can see in the Table 2, we are in the 10 place on overpriced internet charges, with 387.8 USD per annum. Those data are interesting, especially in the background of the RA Government declaration about IT as a major chapter. That is to say, once again “false project” of the Government is considered to be surfaced.