Tajikistan - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband - Statistics and Analyses

Slower Growth in Tajikistan’s Mobile Market and Fixed Broadband Penetration Remains Very Low

Tajikistan government resorts to meaningless decrees in attempt to boost internet speeds

The Tajikistan government has maintained a tight grip over the country’s access to the Internet while at the same time ensuring it retains a lucrative share of the revenue from the traffic passing through the network. It has achieved this by providing state-owned telco Tajik Telecom with 100% control over international connectivity; all internet traffic must pass through a single access point, with Tajik Telecom (in collusion with the state telecom regulator Communications Service, or CS) throttling data speeds and charging high access fees to local ISPs and competitor mobile operators for the privilege.

The result is Tajikistan suffering from being one of the slowest ten places in the world for internet speed in 2021, according to data from Cable.co.uk, with an average download speed of just 1.82Mb/s.

International as well as domestic criticism of Tajik Telecom’s monopoly over internet traffic (including from the World Bank) has led to a somewhat muted response from the government, merely issuing decrees to the CS to “introduce measures to improve the speed and quality of internet connections in the country”. Given the mutually beneficial relationship the CS has with one of the major telecom operators that it is supposed to be regulating, it is unclear what actions, if any, will be taken to produce something more akin to a free market.