You think your broadband provider is expensive,
try $3,355 per month for a 1.5Mbps DSL connection. Welcome to the internet
in Kazakhstan. With DSL prices like these, it's no wonder Borat left Kazakhstan
behind! A new report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (
PDF)
paints a grim picture of Internet access in Kazakhstan and shows how difficult
life can be for those in poor and authoritarian countries who want to join the
worldwide community of Internet users.
Consider the prices for Internet access, for one. Most users (and only four
percent of the country even has access) hook up through state-owned
Kazakhtelecom, a company not concerned with competitive pricing for its
services. An unlimited dial-up plan costs about 82 ($111) in a country where
the average monthly wage is 292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps
connection costs 2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn't even included the required
ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It'll cost you, to the tune of
16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a
thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.
Wow. I pay 4500 czech crowns (~ 225 US dollars) a month for 4Mbps/512Kbs
unlimited DSL connection and I thought that internet in my area was expensive
hehe :-)