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Belarusian Network Providers
Belarus
, by virtue of its Communist heritage,
has several peculiar feature of the structure of the network providers.
First of all
, it used to be a part of Russian networks.
The first network was
Relcom
, that was developing fast at the time
of USSR disintegration. At the time there were some 10 nodes of
Relcom
in Belarus.
Secondly
, the major network provider Belpark is state-run,
, and every other commercial vendor must obtain a state license from the
Ministry of Communication that includes a condition that all the traffic
must go through the
Belpak
. Though some independent network providers
found ways around this monopoly. Pricing structures vary widely, but most
of the access providers charge a combination of monthly fee and connect
charges. Generally the costs are rather higher coparing to the American
prices.
Speaking about the most basic service: -e-mail, there are two distinct
groups of network providers in Belarus. The First one includes Belpak,
Unibel (Otkrity Kontakt), Glasnet, TransInform, Sonet. They use the old
UUCP (UNIX to UNIX Connection Protocol), that came into being in the late
1970's. So the concept of friendly user interface is alien to UUCP. If
you are not a MIT graduate, you may find it possible to customize your
system. Besides you can't have dial-up lines with UUCP due to low speed
and high noise level.The usual e-mail-readers are either beauty-mail, or
demos-mail, that have ugly DOS interface. You can go for it, only if you
haven't seen anything better. Prices for e-mailservices vary slightly for
this group.
The
secondgroup
is more diverse in terms of availiable
services and prices. it includes Sovam-Teleport and Sprint.
Sovam
with
its Dionis e-mail system has the maximum speed 2 400bps, which can be a
hard burden for your budget, because they charge you for the connection
time. On the other hand,
Sprint
can work with high-speed modems.
They have their own communication lines, not connected to
Belpak
,
and provide a variety of high-quality services, though the prices are sky-high.
You can get a good software packege for 100$, with e-mail,faxing, and telexing
capabilities. Sending e-mails out of
Sprint
to Internet is expensive.
Additional services for UUCP users include access to the conferences
of
Relcom
and
Usenet
, where you may find some useful commercial
information.
Sovam
provides the on-line access to some databases
like
Russia-On-Line
.
Unibel
provides an acces to fax-servers,
thought it'll cost just like a direct phone call to the same location (e.g.,
$4 per page for USA). Glasnet provides the same service for much lower
prices.
The Acilles heel of Byelorussian networks is full Internet access.
Only several vendors can provide it at sky-high prices and still with lots
of drawbacks. Dial-up lines with maximum 14 400bps speed and unreliable
connection makes WWW exploratiom quite a challenge. The delays can be up
to 5 seconds, which can make viewing homepages very frustrating. The World
Wide Web spinder starts to make its web in Belarus . V&S independent
Group; Sakharov's College and Silicon Graphics have homepages, and there
are several others under constraction. Compuserve and America Online users
can connect to their accounts through Sprint and have the full Internet
access. The best way to explore the wonders of WWW is to get a leased line,
though it is going to coast afortune. For example, Belpak will provide
you with a leased line for $600 per month, but we are talking about "real"
Internet now.
And finelly some words about quality of services. As Imentioned ealier
Belpak
is a state-run company, which respectively means a poor servise.
Unibel's
employees are more friendly, and seem to care about their
clients, though never mind occational crashes ( averaging two crashes per
month), then you can't get uour mail for a couple days.
Sovam
providers "guest" access to their system, which
enables you to explore their services before getting it. You can browse
through the information that includes the description of their services
and prices. Furthermore, their employees will be glad to visit your office
and intoduce their system. Sovam-Teleport, an American-Russian-British
joint venture, has a reputation for being a very reliable network, though
the prices are a lot higher than in their Moscow branch. Glassnet is famous
for its bilinguial interface and relatively lower prices. Sprint, a US-Russian
joint venture, also provides friendly European-like service. But, please,
do not criticise them. Because some of them seem to be sure that Sprint
is the best network, and any problem that you have are due to your misunderstanding
or lack of knowledge. Providing access to Compuserve, America Online, MCIMail
and Microsoft Network Sprint-net can appeal to foreign users.
some
personers,
to my mained, are very active in the creation of
negative image
of our country in INTERNET:
-
The virtual guide
to Belarus: History; Maps; the national
Athem; Statistics; a Dictionary; Genealogy and so on. Complied by
Alexander
Artsyukovich
-
Minsk-based web site
offerring (opposite views)
Minsk
Economic News
on-line (not free of payment), pictures and other items
about Belarus. Complied by
Nick
Murakhovsky
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