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INFOCOM 10-25-2006: The article talks about the results of Uzbekistan national team’s participation in the World Cyber Games (WCG) 2006 Final. The WCG 2006 final ended on October 22 in Italy. Over 700 gamers from 70 national teams took part in the championship. They competed for eight sets of medals in eight official types of games of the championship. This is Uzbekistan’s third year participating in this event, and this year the team has shown its best results. Nine gamers represented the country in four categories of games: StarCraft®: Brood War™, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, WarCraft® III: Frozen Throne and Half-Life™: Counter-Strike 1.6. The best results among the teammates showed Artur Arnazanov (Andold) in the game Need for Speed: Most Wanted, who took the fifth place and reached the ¼ final. He is 15 years old, and plans to become a prize winner next year. Vyacheslav Yugay (overdrive) brought a significant amount of points to Uzbek team, and became one of the 16 best gamers in the world in StarCraft®: Brood War™. In Grand Final WCG 2006 the first place won the team from South Korea, Russia-second, and Germany -third. Championship of World Cyber Games series are held since 2000 and Uzbekistan was invited as a participant in 2004. In 2005 Uzbek national team was rated 29th among best 70 national teams in the world. This year five cities (Bukhara, Samarkand, Namangan, Karshi, Tashkent) held competitions, WCG Uzbekistan Preliminary, among 3000 local gamers to choose the representatives of the national team. This year’s results are not published yet, but Uzbek team is convinced of the growth of its professionalism. Next Final WCG championship will be held in October 2007 in Seattle. Article web site link:http://infocom.uz/more.php?id=1872_0_1_0_M

The article discusses the expansion of CDMA2000(r) in Central Asia. The region the article describes is comprised of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, represents a population of more than 236 million. CDMA2000 networks are already serving most of the people living in this diverse and populace region. The technology's inherent flexibility and adaptability in addressing different topographies, population densities, and service line-ups has enabled operators to viably operate in the urban and remote areas of Central Asia, where landline services are not easily available and voice usage is moderately high. The CDMA Development Group (CDG) announce that up to 23 CDMA2000 operators are bridging the digital divide in countries such as Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan by offering affordable voice and broadband data access to millions of users in both urban and rural areas. These operators have been able to sustain average revenue per user (ARPU) that is above the industry average, while providing areas that have limited purchasing power with affordable voice and value added data services. The article includes a list of the CDMA operators in Central Asia that have commercially deployed or are planning to deploy CDMA2000 services within the next six months. Web site link: http://au.biz.yahoo.com/061009/21/x8oz.html

We closed websites just for technical reasons, says communications ministerFrom Asia-Plus media group/Tajikistan by Nazarali Pirnazarov: DUSHANBE, October 16, Tajik Minister of Communications Said Zuvaydov told a news conference in Dushanbe today that access to five websites was not available last week for technical reasons. According to him, the ministry did not block the websites. “The websites were closed for testing new technology currently being introduced by the ministry in the country,” said Saidov, “After the new technology was tested access to the websites was restored within several days.” The minister added that because of the testing procedure some other websites may be suspended as well. Zuvaydov, however, noted that there are sites that release unfounded information. “In order to avoid this we will close them for some hours to find out circumstances,” the minister said. However, he did not explain what does he mean. As it had been reported earlier, State Communication Inspectorate (SCI) of the Ministry of Communications in early October asked local Internet providers to block a number of websites. The SCI noted that reports released by those websites have an anti-state character, propagating racial and ethnic enmity. The considered it necessary to filter a number of websites and block access to the them. Among them are www.centrasia.ru; www.ferghana.ru; www.TajikistanTimes.ru; www.charogiruz.ru and www.arianastorm.com. Later, access to these websites was restored. web site link: http://www.asiaplus.tj/en/news/41/11630.html The earlier article from Asia-Plus: “Access denied” by P.Khamidova and N. Khamrabaeva emphasized that time chosen to block the web sites was preceding the presidential elections in Tajikistan, thus this decision found a broad resonance in media. Answering the question about the time chosen for closure of the web sites vice-director of Agency for media management of the Ministry of Communication of Tajikistan, Khurshid Radjabmahmadov, stated, that in the latest time these web sites started to carry the information of propaganda that damage the state policies. While unblocking the web sites the official from the Agency referred to a number of complains received by the Ministry from representatives of International and local NGOs.