The government of Kazakhstan will promote national Internet
The government of Kazakhstan is out to develop the national segment of the Internet or Kaznet. The development concept is expected in the government within a week.
Prime Minister Karim Masimov is convinced that the government should adopt the Kaznet development concept "the sooner, the better".
Kuanyshbek Yesekeyev, Chairman of the Informatics and Communications Agency, claims that the concept will concentrate on two objectives - increase of the number of Internet-users in Kazakhstan (and users of Kazakh content as well) and development of infrastructure.
Yesekeyev said 1.6 million Internet-users were registered in Kazakhstan in 2007 (approximately 11% of the population). "The users who make use of "Kazakhstan", "Astana", and "Almaty" as key words constantly increase in numbers. According to Yandex and Rambler, over 1 million people use Kaznet resources every month. They include the Kazakhs themselves (62%), Russians (29%), residents of other CIS countries (4%), citizens of European countries (3%), citizens of North America (1%), Asia (1%), and others (0.5%)," Yesekeyev said.
The Informatics and Communications Agency intends to form a pool of frequently visited Kazakh Internet web sites (ten state ones and twenty private). "We want these 30 web sites used by every Kazakh," Yesekeyev added.
The official promised that the national search system would be launched later this year. "Its development is stipulated by the Electronic Government program," he said. "I hope we will launch it this year already."
Yesekeyev believes that the national search system is a portal in need of immediate development. "It is a must because every Internet-user associates the web with search systems like Rambler, Mail.ru, yandex, or Google," he said. "All of them are, however, foreign. We want a search system with its own slogan."
Kazakhstan Today