YEREVAN. - Recently, the Internet traffic in Armenia has increased. But along with the optimistic data, about 70-80 percent of the traffic falls on external flows. This can be explained by the fact that the hosting (space that contains the content of the website) of many Armenian websites is in other countries; besides, Armenian users visit international websites a lot (Facebook, Odnoklassniki, Google etc.).

As a result, extra traffic is used in Armenia to visit websites with external hosting, and this leads to connection overload and results in extra expenditures for operators influencing the final tariff costs for customers. Only 19 percent of websites use local hosting in Armenia.

To somehow solve this problem, the “Journalists for the Future” NGO (JFF) started a project entitled “Developing concepts to increase the share of internal traffic in the Armenian segment of the Internet.” The aim of the project is to create mechanisms for developing Armenian content and increasing the share of internal traffic.

The tariff policy of telecommunication operators, the international experience of the sphere, and the IT security level of the Armenian hosting will be studied in the frames of the project. Experts in IT security, sociology and marketing will participate in the project’s implementation.

In the frames of the project, discussions on the given problem will be held among representatives of private companies working in IT and telecommunication fields, as well as among representatives of NGOs, state institutions and international experts.

Also, problems related to the Armenian online media and IT-security will be in the spotlight. The results of the research will be presented to the society, and the concepts will be suggested for the discussion of respective institutions.

The project is financed by the Open Society Foundations – Armenia.