Page 22 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine December 2023

22 I Companies & Markets bne December 2023
The head of the BIA, Aleksandar Vulin, recently resigned.
A prominent pro-Russian figure within the Serbian establishment, Vulin was placed on the United States Treasury’s sanctions list because of his support for Moscow earlier this year.
In the past year, both Citizen Lab and Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) also pointed to the Serbian government as a probable operator of Cytrox's Predator spyware. Furthermore, Citizen Lab's research suggests that Serbia has been using Pegasus spyware since at least December 2021.
Serbia is due to hold a snap general election in December.
The campaign ahead of the election is “highly polarised” with an “unprecedented level of negative campaigning and fearmongering”, a report from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) warned on November 27.
A PACE observer team expressed concern about unprece- dented levels of negative campaigning, fearmongering, attacks on the opposition and journalists, and media-related issues. The team criticised inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech, and pressure on opposition members and journalists, stressing
the need for fact-based information for voters.
Tajikistan: Communications regulator
loosening monopoly
Eurasianet
The first step to solving a problem is admitting that it exists. Telecommunications regulators in Tajikistan have taken a surprising step in that direction by report- edly admitting last week that a staggering 95% of the country’s territory is covered by only outdated 2G mobile connections.
This situation is in no small part due to the State Communica- tions Service itself. In addition to regulating the sector, the service and the people running it are also major market play- ers, albeit in highly nebulous ways that would be unthinkable almost anywhere else in the world.
Two weekends ago, the regulator announced that it is allowing two mobile telecommunications operators, MegaFon Tajikistan and Tcell, to source internet data through international chan- nels instead of relying, as all ISPs are now required to do, on a state-run data spigot called the Unified Electronic Communi- cations Switching Centre, or EKTs in its commonly deployed Russian-language acronym.
EKTs is operated by joint-stock phone and internet company Tojiktelecom, which is in turn run by the State Communica- tions Service, a body that has been long run by a relative by marriage of President Emomali Rahmon. This in effect has made Tojiktelecom a for-profit monopoly run by a government service designed in theory to protect consumer interests.
The ostensible purpose of the EKTs is to grant the state powers to fully vet internet traffic, for security reasons, among other things. The most noticeable impact of this arrangement, however, is that Tajikistan has some of the worst internet speeds in the world. The Amsterdam-headquartered company that operates the Beeline brand and Sweden-based mobile phone company TeliaSonera have both pulled out of Tajikistan amid difficulties navigating a market riddled with corruption and arbitrary policy-making.
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It is unclear what has prompted the telecoms regulator to ease the current monopolistic set-up.
It is known that at least some parts of the ruling family
are frustrated with the current situation. In January 2022, President Rahmon’s son and presumed successor-in-waiting, Rustam Emomali, complained about the quality of service provided by mobile companies. Emomali was especially exer- cised by what he said was the discrepancy between the quality of service advertised and what was actually provided.
Even Rahmon had grounds for being annoyed. A source at one mobile telecommunications company last year told Eurasianet, on condition of anonymity, that they and indus- try peers were ordered to work on improving the quality of their service after an incident, also in January 2022, in which Rahmon experienced trouble staying online during a Collec- tive Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) virtual summit. Other participants in that online video call included Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakhstan’s President Kassym- Jomart Tokayev.
“During the meeting, his connection dropped out about seven to 10 times. The president was angered by the quality of the internet and reprimanded the head of the communications service,” the source told Eurasianet.
But that reprimand was evidently not sufficient to unseat that official, Beg Sabur, the relative related to Rahmon by marriage, or bring about any significant change. While there has been
a marginal improvement in internet speeds since December 2022, the overall trajectory remains dispiriting.
This article first appeared on Eurasianet.