Broadcasting

• ICT sector's contribution to the country economic development is increasing rapidly. For example, ICT sector per cent for the GDP 1.99% in 1995 to 5.66% in 2000 year.
• Mongolian National TV (MN TV) and Radio, the only biggest broadcasting station in Mongolia, covers all territory of the country. There are another 4 TV stations: Eagle TV, Channel 25 and UBS TV in Ulaanbaatar and UBS RGB in Darkhan. There are small Regional TV stations in all aimags.
• 48 FM radios in country of which 13 FM Radios in Ulaanbaatar and at least one regional FM station in each aimag centers .
• There are 5 major cable TV providers: "Hiimori", "Sansar", "SuperVision" "Manai Delgets", "Minii Mongol" operating in Ulaanbaatar and several others in 4 main cities. CATV is provided to more than 80 thousand households. Two companies are started wireless TV distribution . [CRC, 2002].

Website

• According to a survey by the Infocon, there are about 1000 active websites under .MN domain hosted on local ISP's servers. 10 % of total number of websites belonged to government, 14 % to educational, 61 % to business community, 13 % to NGOs, and rest to individuals. 50% of the websites are in local language.
• Those web sites are distributed and allocated on 35 web servers supported and managed by local ISPs. About 22 % of web servers are based on Linux operating system, 10 % are on Solaris and about 60 % are based on WindowsNT/2000.

Education

• According to Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology statistics, 506,000 children attend in 683 secondary schools, from which 95 schools are in Ulaanbaatar and 511 schools are in provinces.
• There are about 740 PCs in Ulaanbaatar schools and 770 PCs are available in rural schools. By 2000, 55 schools in Ulaanbaatar and 8 schools in provinces had basic Internet email access. One PC is available for every 333 school children, and computer availability in schools are 2.4 PCs per one school.
• Internet and computer penetration in colleges and universities is growing and is quite promising. The total number of PCs in colleges and universities is more than 5,000 and its 70% allocated for training or laboratory research activities.
• Currently 15 universities and colleges are connected to Internet via a high-speed wireless network, and 40 secondary schools have dial-up access to the Internet through Erdemnet.
  

Online Services

• By 2001, total number of Internet active subscribers, including both corporate and individual accounts, reached more than 9,000. Trends indicate this amount will increase by about 8-10 percent annually .
• Estimated Internet users are currently more than 30,000. 60 % of total Internet users are organizations, 38 % are households or individual users. Geographically, around 95 % of total users are based in Ulaanbaatar.
• There are about 1000 registered domain names under ".MN". These are divided into the following categories: individuals-20%, business entities-60%, government-10%, NGO's-6% and 4 % of others.
• About 60 % of .MN domain names are registered by international or overseas organizations. Domain name registration is fully automated and requires no human involvement in the registration and payment procedures .
• The overall Mongolian telecommunication basic network consists of 3100km analogue, and approximately 900km of digital microwave lines connecting Ulaanbaatar and aimag centers.
• The switching stations have a total switching capacity of 143,857 telephone lines, with more than 122,120 lines currently in service.
• More than 93.7 percent of the total existing switching capacity and 30 percent of the transmission network are digital. 13 aimag centers, 3 towns, and 1 soum center are linked using VSAT systems. Within the framework of telecommunications network infrastructure achievements, 15 provinces of 21 province centers now have fully installed and operational digital switches.
• The other phone service provider is Mongolian Railway Company (MRC), a state owned joint venture with Russia, offering domestic and long distance telephony for location along the railway. The railway network has a total capacity of 15,000 lines by end of 2001.
• Datacom introduced the first Internet e-mail service to the public in 1994 and full Internet services were introduced in January of 1996.
• At present there are 7 ISPs in Mongolia. 5 of them are private companies. There is a local ISP operating in Erdenet, second largest city in Mongolia.
• ISPs provide services such as dial-up access, email, web hosting, dedicated leased line service via fiber optic, satellite, xDSL, VOIP, fax over Internet, e-commerce applications and services. The total international bandwidth of Internet is about 10Mpbs.

Internet café/Public Internet centers

• There are more than 70 Internet cafés and 10 Public Internet centers operating in Mongolia. The Internet cafes offer shared access to Internet, fax over IP and Internet phone services for public.

Hardware and Software

• According to the estimation by the Infocon (2001), currently approximately 50,000 computers are in use, and this number is expected to increase by 8-10 % a year (No official statistics).
• On the other hand National Statistical Office estimated a total of 80,000 computers by year 2000 whereof 3.8% in private use.
• More than 90% of total computers have the Microsoft operating system and applications, and Mac OS, Linux or Unix systems are rarely (less 3%) used.
• More than 30 software companies serve the local market with customized applications including financial accounting, banking, insurance, customer service systems, and others.

Quotes

• "To develop a society based on knowledge and intellectual potentials and to develop the quality of people's lives". - Parliament of Mongolia, Feb 2000 (The mission of the ICT development concept in Mongolia)

Source: Digital Review for Asia Pacific