Communications in Belarus
Encyclopedia
The Media and telecommunications in Belarus are dominated by the state which owns most of the corporations and infrastructure.
Mobile/cellular: 9.686 million (2009)
The Ministry of Telecommunications controls all telecommunications originating within the country through its carrier unitary enterprise
, Beltelecom, which is controlled as a monopoly. The phone calling code for Belarus is +375.
Belarus has 3 GSM operators (velcom, MTS, and life), the NMT-450 and CDMA-2000 operator. Mobile operators are experiencing rapid growth. Minsk
has a digital metropolitan network; waiting lists for telephones are long; fixed line penetration is improving although rural areas continue to be undeserved; intercity - Belarus has developed fibre-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fibre optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analogue system remains operational.
Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe Fibre-Optic Line (TAE) and has access to the Trans-Siberia Line (TSL); three fibre-optic segments provide connectivity to Latvia
, Poland
, Russia
, and Ukraine
; worldwide service is available to Belarus through this infrastructure; additional analogue lines to Russia; Intelsat
, Eutelsat
, and Intersputnik
earth stations
and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union
media expression flourished, with a wide variety of newspapers that presented a wide variety of points of view.
During the first 10 years of Lukashenko's presidency, most of the Belarusian media outlets (newspapers, radio, television) were brought under the control of the state. The state-controlled media present pro-government
points of view and interpretation of events as in the Soviet
period. There are a number of privately owned media outlets, mostly small independent newspapers. They operate under a permanent threat of being closed down for violating various government regulations, such as misstating their corporate name on publications or operating out of an office not registered with the government (in fact, this is the situation for all private enterprises in Belarus).
Belarus is switching from an analog to digital broadcast television. The process is due to finish by 2015.
Television channels with news content and nationwide coverage are all either state owned or state controlled (i.e. state bodies own more than 50 percent of the shares). There is not a single privately owned TV channel with nationwide coverage. Licenses for TV and radio broadcasters are issued by the Republican Commission on Television and Radio Broadcasting, the chair of which is the minister of information. Other regulatory functions are undertaken by the information ministry directly. The only producer of broadcast news is the Belarusian Television and Radio Company (BT). Regional channels produce 25-40 percent of their own programming. They do not produce their own news or current affairs programs, relying instead on news from national channels. Some 400,000 homes in Belarus have satellite dishes.
Radios: 3.02 million (1997)
Magazines: 585 (2010)
News agencies: 8 national, 6 of which are private (2010)
There are two types of newspaper, state owned and privately owned, divided into sharply contrasting camps. State owned newspapers make up some 80-85 percent of newspaper circulation. The state owned newspapers have large circulations running into hundreds of thousands.
The most important of these is the daily Sovetskaya Belarussia – Belarus segodnya (Soviet Belarus – Belarus Today), published by the presidential administration, with a circulation of about 500,000. Other significant state owned newspapers are the daily Respublika
(The Republic), published by the Cabinet of Ministers, and the weeklies Sem’ Dnei (Seven Days) and Narodnaya Gazeta (The People’s Paper).
In 1999 it became obligatory to register with the state press distributor.
The "Belorussian Internet" is widely called ByNet (Байнет) (as an analogue of Runet
).
The state telecom monopoly, Beltelecom, holds the exclusive interconnection with Internet providers outside of Belarus. Beltelecom owns all the backbone channels that linked to the Tata Communications
(former Teleglobe), Synterra, and Rostelecom
ISP's. Beltelecom is the only operator licensed to provide commercial VoIP services in Belarus.
Until 2005-2006 broadband access (mostly using ADSL) was available only in a few major cities in Belarus. In Minsk
there were a dozen privately owned ISP's and in some larger cities Beltelecom's broadband was available. Outside these cities the only options for Internet access were dial-up from Beltelecom or GPRS/cdma2000
from mobile operators. In 2006 Beltelecom introduced a new trademark, Byfly, for its ADSL access. As of 2008 Byfly was available in all administrative centre
s of Belarus. Other ISPs are expanding their broadband networks beyond Minsk as well. On July 2011, Beltelecom announced a plan to raise the capacity of its Internet gateway to Russia by 20Gbit/s by the end of 2011 and announced a tender to provide the service.
Internet use:
The most active Internet users in Belarus belong to the 17–22 age group (38 percent), followed by users in the 23–29 age group. Internet access in Belarus is predominantly urban, with 60 percent of users living in the capital Minsk. The profile of the average Internet user is male, university educated, living in the capital, and working in a state enterprise. The Ministry for Statistics and Analysis estimates that one in four families in Belarus owns a computer at home. The popularity of Internet café
s has fallen in recent years, as most users prefer to access the Internet from home or work. Russian is the most widely used language by Belarusians on the Internet, followed by Belarusian, English, and Polish.
In mid-2009 there were more than 22,300 Belarusian Web sites, of which roughly 13,500 domain names were registered with the top-level domain name ‘‘.by’’.
In June 2011 E-Belarus.org listed:
The situation is complex, however, because the relatively free Russia
n media is allowed to transmit television programming, sell newspapers and conduct journalistic activities in Belarus (though some Russian journalists have been expelled by the Belarusian government) thus giving some members of the public, typically those in large cities with many Russian residents, access to an alternative point of view in the Russian language
(nearly all Belarusians
understand and most of them speak Russian).
Because the Belarus government severely limits free expression, several opposition media outlets are broadcast from nearby countries to help provide Belarusians alternative points of view. This includes the Belsat TV station and European Radio for Belarus
(Eŭrapéjskaje Rádyjo dla Biełarúsi)
Reporters Without Borders
ranked Belarus
154th out of 178 countries in its 2010 Press Freedom Index
. By comparison, the same index ranked neighbor Ukraine, 131st and Russia, 140th. The closest other European countries were considerably better in terms of press freedom, with Serbia
ranked 85th and Romania
52nd.
In the 2011 Freedom House
Freedom of the Press report
, Belarus scored 92 on a scale from 10 (most free) to 99 (least free), because the Lukashenko regime systematically curtails press freedom. This score placed Belarus 9th from the bottom of the 196 countries included in the report and earned the country a "Not Free" status.
Major telecommunications operators broadcast in Belarus (in Belarusian):
Telephone system
Telephone lines in use: 3.969 million (2009)Mobile/cellular: 9.686 million (2009)
The Ministry of Telecommunications controls all telecommunications originating within the country through its carrier unitary enterprise
Unitary enterprise
A unitary enterprise is a government-owned corporation in Russia and some other post-Soviet states. Unitary enterprises are business entities that have no ownership rights to the assets they use in their operations....
, Beltelecom, which is controlled as a monopoly. The phone calling code for Belarus is +375.
Belarus has 3 GSM operators (velcom, MTS, and life), the NMT-450 and CDMA-2000 operator. Mobile operators are experiencing rapid growth. Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
has a digital metropolitan network; waiting lists for telephones are long; fixed line penetration is improving although rural areas continue to be undeserved; intercity - Belarus has developed fibre-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fibre optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analogue system remains operational.
Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe Fibre-Optic Line (TAE) and has access to the Trans-Siberia Line (TSL); three fibre-optic segments provide connectivity to Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
; worldwide service is available to Belarus through this infrastructure; additional analogue lines to Russia; Intelsat
Intelsat
Intelsat, Ltd. is a communications satellite services provider.Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization , it was—from 1964 to 2001—an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast...
, Eutelsat
Eutelsat
Eutelsat S.A. is a French-based satellite provider. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, as well as the Middle East, Africa, India and significant parts of Asia and the Americas, it is one of the world's three leading satellite operators in terms of revenues.Eutelsat’s satellites...
, and Intersputnik
Intersputnik
The Intersputnik International Organization of Space Communications commonly known as Intersputnik is an international satellite communications services organization founded on November 15, 1971, in Moscow by the Soviet Union along with a group of eight formerly socialist states...
earth stations
Media
During the time of perestroikaPerestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...
media expression flourished, with a wide variety of newspapers that presented a wide variety of points of view.
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
points of view and interpretation of events as in the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
period. There are a number of privately owned media outlets, mostly small independent newspapers. They operate under a permanent threat of being closed down for violating various government regulations, such as misstating their corporate name on publications or operating out of an office not registered with the government (in fact, this is the situation for all private enterprises in Belarus).
Television
Television broadcast stations: 77 of which 48 are privately owned (2010)Belarus is switching from an analog to digital broadcast television. The process is due to finish by 2015.
Television channels with news content and nationwide coverage are all either state owned or state controlled (i.e. state bodies own more than 50 percent of the shares). There is not a single privately owned TV channel with nationwide coverage. Licenses for TV and radio broadcasters are issued by the Republican Commission on Television and Radio Broadcasting, the chair of which is the minister of information. Other regulatory functions are undertaken by the information ministry directly. The only producer of broadcast news is the Belarusian Television and Radio Company (BT). Regional channels produce 25-40 percent of their own programming. They do not produce their own news or current affairs programs, relying instead on news from national channels. Some 400,000 homes in Belarus have satellite dishes.
Radio
Radio broadcast stations: 156 with 21 privately owned, including 29 FM stations (2010)Radios: 3.02 million (1997)
Newspapers and magazines
Newspapers: 651 (2010)Magazines: 585 (2010)
News agencies: 8 national, 6 of which are private (2010)
There are two types of newspaper, state owned and privately owned, divided into sharply contrasting camps. State owned newspapers make up some 80-85 percent of newspaper circulation. The state owned newspapers have large circulations running into hundreds of thousands.
The most important of these is the daily Sovetskaya Belarussia – Belarus segodnya (Soviet Belarus – Belarus Today), published by the presidential administration, with a circulation of about 500,000. Other significant state owned newspapers are the daily Respublika
Respublika
Respublika may refer to:* Respublika Party of Kyrgyzstan* Respublika * Respublika * Respublika * Respublika , an album by the Ukrainians...
(The Republic), published by the Cabinet of Ministers, and the weeklies Sem’ Dnei (Seven Days) and Narodnaya Gazeta (The People’s Paper).
In 1999 it became obligatory to register with the state press distributor.
Internet
Country code: .byThe "Belorussian Internet" is widely called ByNet (Байнет) (as an analogue of Runet
Runet
Currently Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite...
).
The state telecom monopoly, Beltelecom, holds the exclusive interconnection with Internet providers outside of Belarus. Beltelecom owns all the backbone channels that linked to the Tata Communications
Tata Communications
Tata Communications Limited ) is a telecommunications company located in Mumbai. They own a submarine cable network, a Tier-1 IP network, and also rent data center and colocation space. They operate India's largest data center in Pune...
(former Teleglobe), Synterra, and Rostelecom
Rostelecom
Rostelecom network, which as of August 2006, covered Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Stavropol, and planned to cover the whole of Russia by the end of 2006.-Satellite network:...
ISP's. Beltelecom is the only operator licensed to provide commercial VoIP services in Belarus.
Until 2005-2006 broadband access (mostly using ADSL) was available only in a few major cities in Belarus. In Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
there were a dozen privately owned ISP's and in some larger cities Beltelecom's broadband was available. Outside these cities the only options for Internet access were dial-up from Beltelecom or GPRS/cdma2000
CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is a family of 3G mobile technology standards, which use CDMA channel access, to send voice, data, and signaling data between mobile phones and cell sites. The set of standards includes: CDMA2000 1X, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. 0, CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A, and CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. B...
from mobile operators. In 2006 Beltelecom introduced a new trademark, Byfly, for its ADSL access. As of 2008 Byfly was available in all administrative centre
Administrative centre
An administrative centre is a term often used in several countries to refer to a county town, or other seat of regional or local government, or the place where the central administration of a commune is located....
s of Belarus. Other ISPs are expanding their broadband networks beyond Minsk as well. On July 2011, Beltelecom announced a plan to raise the capacity of its Internet gateway to Russia by 20Gbit/s by the end of 2011 and announced a tender to provide the service.
Internet use:
- According to a 2006 survey of 1,500 adults by Satio, a third of Belarusians use the Internet—38% of the urban population and 16% of the rural population.
- A 2006 study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and DevelopmentUnited Nations Conference on Trade and DevelopmentThe United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was established in 1964 as a permanent intergovernmental body. It is the principal organ of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with trade, investment, and development issues....
indicates 56.5% of Belarus' population were internet-users. - The International Telecommunications Union showed Internet penetration (Internet users per 100 population) in 2009 at 27% for Belarus, 42% for Serbia, 37% for Romania, 29% for Russia, and 17% for Ukraine.
- According to Internet World Stats, Internet penetration in June 2010 was 47.5%. For comparison, Internet penetration in the Ukraine was 33.7%, in Romania 35.5%, Russia 42.8%, and Serbia 55.9%.
The most active Internet users in Belarus belong to the 17–22 age group (38 percent), followed by users in the 23–29 age group. Internet access in Belarus is predominantly urban, with 60 percent of users living in the capital Minsk. The profile of the average Internet user is male, university educated, living in the capital, and working in a state enterprise. The Ministry for Statistics and Analysis estimates that one in four families in Belarus owns a computer at home. The popularity of Internet café
Internet cafe
An Internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name...
s has fallen in recent years, as most users prefer to access the Internet from home or work. Russian is the most widely used language by Belarusians on the Internet, followed by Belarusian, English, and Polish.
In mid-2009 there were more than 22,300 Belarusian Web sites, of which roughly 13,500 domain names were registered with the top-level domain name ‘‘.by’’.
In June 2011 E-Belarus.org listed:
- 2 ISPs in the Brest region, 4 in the Gomel region, 1 in the Grodno region, 26 in the Minsk region, 1 in the Mogilev region, and 1 in the Vitebsk region
- 4 ADSL providers
- 3 technology parks
- 2 educational networks
- more than 30 Internet cafes and Wi-Fi HotspotsHotspot (Wi-Fi)A hotspot is a site that offers Internet access over a wireless local area network through the use of a router connected to a link to an Internet service provider...
Limited free expression
Many western human rights groups state that civil rights and free expression are severely limited in Belarus, though there are some individuals and groups that refuse to be controlled and some journalists have disappeared.The situation is complex, however, because the relatively free Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n media is allowed to transmit television programming, sell newspapers and conduct journalistic activities in Belarus (though some Russian journalists have been expelled by the Belarusian government) thus giving some members of the public, typically those in large cities with many Russian residents, access to an alternative point of view in the Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
(nearly all Belarusians
Belarusians
Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...
understand and most of them speak Russian).
Because the Belarus government severely limits free expression, several opposition media outlets are broadcast from nearby countries to help provide Belarusians alternative points of view. This includes the Belsat TV station and European Radio for Belarus
European Radio for Belarus
European Radio for Belarus is an international radio station based in Warsaw that provides independent news, information, and entertainment to the citizens of Belarus since February 2006...
(Eŭrapéjskaje Rádyjo dla Biełarúsi)
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
ranked Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
154th out of 178 countries in its 2010 Press Freedom Index
Press Freedom Index
The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. Small countries, such as Andorra, are excluded from this report...
. By comparison, the same index ranked neighbor Ukraine, 131st and Russia, 140th. The closest other European countries were considerably better in terms of press freedom, with Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
ranked 85th and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
52nd.
In the 2011 Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
Freedom of the Press report
Freedom of the Press (report)
Freedom of the Press is a yearly report by US-based non-governmental organization Freedom House, measuring the level of freedom and editorial independence enjoyed by the press in every nation and significant disputed territories around the world. Levels of freedom are scored on a scale from 1 to 100...
, Belarus scored 92 on a scale from 10 (most free) to 99 (least free), because the Lukashenko regime systematically curtails press freedom. This score placed Belarus 9th from the bottom of the 196 countries included in the report and earned the country a "Not Free" status.
External links
- The Ministry of Information of the Republic of Belarus (Belarusian)
- The Ministry of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus (Belarusian)
- Media in Belarus, e-Belarus.org
- Mass media in Belarus on the official website of the Republic of Belarus
Major telecommunications operators broadcast in Belarus (in Belarusian):