Access, blocking and competition

One of the important aspects of Internet use in Kazakhstan has to do with provider monopoly (Megaline Kazakhstan from Kaztelecom) and blocking of particular internet domains that the government (and by some odd extension Megaline itself) considers incendiary or inappropriate, based on some untold, unspoken and largely unknown rules. For example whole domains like livejournal or blogger are simply inaccessible, while wordpress is accessible sometimes and not others. While I knew that LJ has been blocked in KZ for several years now, the blockage of blogger is relatively new and came about with the growing blogging community here. Many kazakh bloggers have they blogs on wordpress or LJ. Wordpress comes under fire often as well for the same reason especially since KZ's own blogging service - YourVision (yvizion.kz) - is gaining popularity.

Since last year, however, monopolies and Megaline's dominance had come under some pressure as new companies are moving into the area and providing access via infrastructure that they rent from Kaztelecom. Beeline, a Russian telco is even putting down its own fiberoptic in order to create competition for Megaline. Of course the first thing everyone noticed with the arrival of minor but available competition is that prices of course started trending down quicker than before. However, the presence of this competition has yet another effect. The Russians really couldn't care to go through the motions of blocking sites and domains. So at the moment, when I am at my friends apartments, I can't access some sites, but I am free to blog on blogger or read LJ without the trouble of proxies at a cafe that is within a block and a half of walking distance and that offers free wifi. This is confusing as hell because it is not obvious which company is providing the connection for which area or location. However, I wonder whether this will be important for business as well. Imagine, you could have megaline at home - and never access blocked sites, but you could easily walk a few blocks to a nearby cafe and blog and read LJ all you want without being tracked... Of the three cafe's within walking distance of the apartment that I am renting, only one has unrestricted access... Guess where I am spending most of my time?