By some odd stroke of luck, the hotel where I am staying in Astana was the site of a KazMedia event the first evening I was there. By another stroke of luck, the people I was meeting at my hotel for an interview, knew several people involved in the event. This event was notable for two specific reasons. First, this was the birthday of 'KazContent' which turned one year old and second, this event marked the launch of several local kazakh resources - social network (ilive.kz), a blogging platform, and most notably, a legal music and movie distributor (urta.kz).
A little bit of history to explain why this is actually notable. Several years ago, the venerable father has ordered that KazNet is physically created (that is the Kazakh infrastructure for Internet - the fiberoptic lines, the cables, the servers, dialup connections and eventually broadly accessible broadband, etc). Kazakhtelecom dutifully created the infrastructure (although the reports of its extensiveness are difficult to verify, given the amount of money actually spent on building is hard to identify). At the time, there was little actual content that was specifically Kazakhstan-related so the majority of internet traffic went outside the country to Russian and International resources. There is a tendency in every post-soviet country to think in terms of 'our' and 'theirs' and to see connections outside the country as unpatriotic. In order to remedy this situation, Kazakhtelecom created 'kaztorka.kz' - a membership torrent site for downloading movies and music. Within a few months several other torrent sites joined the official one and the internal Internet traffic in Kazakhstan soon overtook external connections and they could proudly report this fact to the government. In Kazakhstan, nearly every user accesses the Internet more for downloading movies and music than for anything else (of course this has more to do with the speed of downloads that often takes days of dedicated attempts). In my conversations with a range of people I repeatedly heard that yes, there is a lot of internal traffic but KazNet is still empty (i.e. there are few useful and interesting .kz local sites to visit) and Kazakhtelecom is not particularly happy that nearly all of the internal traffic is torrents because they overload the network but there is no money to be made on that.
About a year ago, the venerable father discovered the fact that KazNet is empty (there are many stories of exactly how this happened but none seem even remotely plausible). He was incensed at the fact and ordered concerted development of KazContent which resulted in the creation of a company by such name (which of course took seed money and then money for their project) and in the creation of a company called KazNetMedia to do the design and development of base sources that can motivate the populace to create their own content. Both companies are for-profit but heavily government funded (otherwise, why would anyone do any of this) and there has been an inordinate amount of money promised for the projects.
Six months ago, the minister in charge of Internet development was told he was not doing a good enough job because well... KazNet was still empty, so he was replaced with the head of KazakhTelecom who actually is an engineer and an IT professional rather than simply a manager. In fact the two were swapped in their positions so the effect might be interesting given that KazakhTelecom will have to undergo changes in its practices as well. At about the same time, Beeline, a Russian telecom company, entered the market not only as a cellphone provider but also as an eventual Internet provider as they were putting in a fiberoptic line connecting to their Russian network, rather than renting the KazakhTelecom hardware. The internet offering is just about to start and Kazakhtelecom companies are feeling the pressure and lowering their tariffs. What is interesting about the whole system that there is a law on the books that everyone must follow, that states that telecom operators and Internet providers are equated to infrastructure projects and thus can not charge differential tariffs based on population density. So Almaty residents get the same tariff as the residents of the tiny villages around Taldy Kurgan (in those areas where there actually is coverage, although theoretically there is supposed to be coverage everywhere). So the lowering of tariffs has to happen everywhere, not just in areas where Beeline is available. So Beeline's presence in Astana and Almata and it's presences as an Internet provider only in Almata is actually likely to result in price-cuts everywhere in the country.
Beeline's presence has another small implication - Beeline has very little incentive to block any internet sites that Kazakhtelecom blocks. The government has no official policy on the matter and Kazakhtelecom prefers to act as if no actual blocking is occurring on any of the resources except for LJ since there actually is a court-order for that one. Nevertheless, none of the blocking is official and to continue blocking and to compel providers like Beeline to block, the government would have to develop an official policy that then can be officially attacked. A quick note about blocking - Opera Turbo servers are inaccessible here in Astana and became inaccessible just a few days ago (according to my informants) along with several other well known proxy servers. Either the blocking in Astana is simply more earnest, or something else is going on.
Now let's go back to the launch that I accidentally got to attend upon arrival here in Astana. The most remarkable thing about all of the presentations was the emphasis on production of local, Kazakhstan based content that would be about life in the country as well as the lives of its people. It was about both professionally producing interesting content and about creating platforms that would encourage citizens to produce their own content. The platforms were a crazy hodgepodge of everything that is already out there, apparently built on the idea that it is possible to take all of the best features, put them together and the result would be something everyone would want to use. Moreover, the social network resource was to attempt bringing the content from all of the social network sites where users are already involved together into one place, thus motivating users not just to switch social network platforms, but to consolidate everything they have on one. Attractive notion, don't you think?
Then there was urta.kz - a site that was committed to changing the illegal pirating practices of Kazakhstan citizens and finally paying royalties on content, thus becoming a law abiding internet space. I spoke to the owners of urta.kz and asked them how they planned on changing the prevailing culture of free that kazakhtelecom in fact built up. They told me that they were committed to the changes and they are in fact financially committed because as soon as they are launched they start to pay royalties on the content so they have to make sure they advertise and educate in a way that makes them money eventually. At the end of the conversation though, as I kept pushing about that culture thing, the guy simply said - look, we just make getting it for free very difficult, we can do that, we have a very good relationship with kazakhtelecom and besides they are already doing that in Russia so we just do the same in Kazakhstan and people will simply have to buy. There was no mention of Beeline... and their servers and their access and the fact that the only place in Russia where there is any movement to really curb pirating is some posturing in Moscow in the last few months with some seizure of servers. So there really isn't any attention to them 'people' but the traditional brute-force approach of getting things to pay... eventually... when government coffers run out.
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