The telecommunication industry in Tajikistan is rapidly developing thanks to the latest technologies brought to the country by the market players. Operators offer a wide range of services, including 3G-based services such as video-calls, mobile TV, mobile Internet and much more.

The industry is taking forward not only the country’s technological development, but also its social and economic phenomena. It has so far enabled the creation of several thousand paid workplaces, offered regular support to various state budgets, and developed flexible and diverse tariff systems for customers, payable even by those with the lowest income. New enterprises are being set up all over the country to serve the needs of the telecommunications sector.

Tajikistan is a highly mountainous country, where 93% of the territory is covered with mountains and more than half of the population lives at the altitudes of over 3,000 meters above sea level. Operators’ high-elevation sites have provided several thousand rural residents in mountainous areas a unique opportunity to stay connected to the outside world, for the first time in their lives.

Mobile operators in Tajikistan were the first to solve the nation-wide problem with communication access by creating a modern infrastructure all around the country. According to the local Ministry of Transport and Communications, over 260,000 households from 550 settlements, which earlier did not have any kind of communication, are now enjoying access.

As of today, nine mobile operators are working in Tajikistan, four of which are GSM operators. All of these four operators provide GSM standard connections, 3G and 3.5G services. All four companies’ networks provide coverage for 99% of the population. If in 2004 the number of GSM subscribers in the country was about 70,000, in 2012 this number reached 6 million.

Thanks to the development of GSM and mobile internet, Tajikistan people have access to:

• Distant education,
• Tele-diagnosis,
• Payment terminals,
• Online shops,
• Electronic circulation of documents between state structures and economic subjects,
• Electronic mass media.

In addition, the development of telecommunication urges the country to educate new specialists and create new jobs, as well as understand the necessity of finding and preparing entirely new subjects for studying in schools and universities.

Mobile communication in Tajikistan is growing fast. At the end of 2010, 60% of the population had mobile communication, now that number has reached 90%. Today, Tcell is the leading operator with 2.5 million subscriptions in a highly competitive local mobile market. In 2007 the total number of Tcell subscribers was less than 700,000, after the acquisition by TeliaSonera, which invested over US $200 million in the development of the company, subscriber numbers reached 2.5 million as of Q2/2012.