DUSHANBE, May 11, Asia-Plus - Tajikistan has exhausted all the frequency resource of the cellular communication standards; it means that no more new cellar operators will appear in Tajikistan within the next few years, Khurshed Rajabmahmadov, Deputy Director of the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) at the Ministry of Communications, said.  .

To date, nine cellular operators working on 15 standards, including GSM, AMPS, CDMA450, CDMA2001X, 3G-UMTS and 3G, have operated in Tajikistan: MLT (Mobile Lines of Tajikistan); “Babilon-M”; “Indigo-Tajikistan”; “Indigo-Somoncom”; “Tacom”; “M.Teco”, “Tojphone”, “Telecom Inc.” (Skytel) and “TK-Mobile”. 

Five operators, including closed joint-stock company TT-Mobile (MLT), “Babilon-M”, “Tacom”, “Indigo-Tajikistan” and “Indigo-Somoncom”, have already received licenses for launching the 3G standard.  “Of them, “TT-Mobile” and “Babilon-M” have already worked with 3G standard, while the remaining three have just launched a test regime,” the CRA official said.  

Mr. Rajabmahmadov added that a few people in Tajikistan were currently using 3G standard.  “Over the past eleven months since the 3G standard was launched, MLT has connected to it only 296 subscribers,” the Asia-Plus interlocutor said.  

As far as a total number of users of mobile communications in the republic is concerned, their number has increased by 16 percent since the beginning of the year, according to Rajabmahmadov.  “To date, a number of mobile communications users in Tajikistan has reached some 500,000 people,” the CRA deputy head said.   

According to figures provided by the Ministry of Communications, from 1996 to 2000, a number of mobile communications users in Tajikistan had been not more than 1000 people.  A number of those wanting to be connected to the mobile communications has mainly increased over the past five years after large companies entered the country’s market of the cellular communications.