INTERNET DEPENDENCE

Technical malfunctions that occurred on 16 November 2015 at the data centre of the country's primary provider - Delta Telecom, resulted in a countrywide internet outage. This incident clearly confirmed that there is a need in this field to pay more attention to security and to support development of organizations that provide for alternative means of communications.

Albeit, it should be noted that Azerbaijan has made considerable progress in developing internet infrastructure, digitalizing telephone exchanges, advancing generation-four cellular technologies, modernizing internet service providers, etc. All this combined ensured a dynamic development of broadband internet services in this country.

The lion's share of internet access in the country is at present provided through fibre-optic and ordinary telephone lines. The key operator in this sector is Delta Telecom - its share is about 90 per cent of all traffic, and the other 10 per cent fall on the other primary provider - Azertelecom. Together these companies make it possible for nearly three dozens of domestic internet service providers and other organizations concerned to access the worldwide web.

In the 1990s, the country accessed the web via satellite internet as well. However, outer space resources in terms of their technical parameters and speed are considerably inferior to fibre-optic access and because of a delay in the signal are not very suitable for transmission of large content. Due to low efficiency and a relatively high cost, satellite communications are almost never used in Azerbaijan to access the internet. For the same reason, the communications equipment of the national communications satellite Azerspace-1 was also not planned to be used as an alternative internet resource.

However, in the last five to six years no particular need for this could be felt, because Delta Telecom managed to diversify in a sufficiently effective manner the system of international connections to the web. As a result, Azerbaijan increased by several times over the number of connections to fibre-optic IP backbones. In particular, back in 2012 the communications operator Delta Telecom established in Frankfurt its own backbone internet hub that allows for transfer of 1.4 terabytes of traffic from Europe to Azerbaijan. This is a very important thing because for many years this country had had to use internet traffic forwarded via domestic cable networks of several transit countries, which led to a technical complication in the communications process and significantly increased the cost of traffic.

All these efforts made it possible to increase the volume of internet traffic in the Azerbaijani national segment of the internet to 300 Gbit/s by the end of last year, and many neighbouring countries have been providing access to the web using Azerbaijan's transit opportunities. For comparison: in 2008 this figure was 6 Gb/s - that is to say, there has been a 50-fold increase over a period of just seven years.

However, having successfully expanded the number of external connections to backbones Azerbaijan failed to diversify equally effectively its domestic distribution system for internet traffic. As noted above, 90 per cent of all connections in the country are at present provided for by primary provider Delta Telecom. It is actually this circumstance that played a nasty trick with users, when at around 1600 hours on 16 November 2015 a main cable started smoking at Delta Telecom's data centre, resulting in interruptions in internet connectivity across the country. Later, an official statement issued by the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies (MCHT) explained that it was possible to avoid an open fire on the premises of the data centre, but a melting cable and heavy smoke led to partial failures in the operation of equipment. After the firefighting service of the Ministry for Emergency Situations and MCHT specialists intervened, the operation of the internet system on the whole was restored by 2100 on the same day. True, stable access to the web and normal connection speed in some areas of the capital city could only be restored the next day. The MCHT's statement said that despite the force majeure situation the operation of transit communications channels was not affected, and no failures were recorded in the transit of international traffic throughout the period of system recovery.

Today, it would be premature to express any judgment on the efficiency of the operation of air conditioning systems, telemetry, various fire detectors and other safety systems that help control the sophisticated equipment at Delta Telecom's data centre. MCHT representatives and other bodies involved in the investigation will probably soon express a competent opinion on the causes of the overload on the cable and other problems that caused the smoke.

However, it is quite clear that this unfortunate incident has once again brought to the foreground the need for domestic internet service providers and their customers to be provided with alternative access to the worldwide web. This is a very important matter, because this incident not only left the majority of ordinary people without access to the web but also triggered problems in the operation of the financial sector and government and private organizations.

Azercell cellular operator's subscribers were also affected by the outage. Among the most affected was the banking sector: there were problems with the operation of cash dispensers and other equipment that require permanent internet connection. Relatively fine was the operation of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication - SWIFT, as it has separate channels to access the web. According to a statement released by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, the national payment system - including the payment systems AZIPS and X?HS (small payments) and clearing systems - also maintained relative stability.

One way or another, the small pause in internet connectivity affected the operation of many organizations and institutions that depend on this kind of communications. A statement issued by the Azerbaijani Internet Forum [NGO] also pointed out the need for serious changes in the formation of national information space, ensuring its security and the need to support market entities that provide alternative access to the web. "Assessing very positively action taken by Delta Telecom to expand the number of connections to backbone channels, in light of this incident it should be acknowledged that these measures are not sufficient, and today there is a need for a more conceptual approach to the problem of the country's information security. There is a need to install backup equipment and infrastructure and to build alternative information networks, and there is a need for a competitive environment to form in this field," says the statement issued by the Internet Forum.

The chairman of the Internet Community of Azerbaijan (ICA), Qalib Qurbanov, is of the same opinion. He believes that domestic internet providers who render services to crucial clients (banks, aviation and other transport companies, and government agencies) should have backup access to international communications channels.

To all appearances, the search for such alternative options of connecting to the web has already started. "A number of providers, leading banks, and a processing centre have now joined the service network of the second primary provider, Azertelecom, and talks are under way with the Ministry of Education, and a number of other lending institutions and companies," the commercial director of Azertelecom Ltd, Sabina Mammadli, said recently. This provider has managed to expand its network after obtaining additional communications channels in Russia, Turkey and Georgia and thereby increasing the capacity of data transfer channels to 70 gigabits per second, with a prospect of a speedy growth up to 100 gigabits.

Let us hope that with the expansion of alternative connection to the web and modernization of domestic optic infrastructure, which is envisaged under the fibre-to-the-home project, all citizens of Azerbaijan and market entities will be provided with uninterrupted and stable high-speed internet in the very near future.