Today, during the Government meeting chaired by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bakytzhan Sagintayev, the project of providing rural settlements with broadband access to the Internet was considered.

Minister of Information and Communications Dauren Abayev reported that within the framework of the project of the State Program "Digital Kazakhstan" a direction is envisaged to provide citizens with high-speed Internet and reduce the digital gap between the village and the city.

It is projected that the project will have a serious socio-economic impact by expanding the coverage of online trade, electronic government services, interactive education tools, healthcare and much more.

To date, all 122 cities and about 1 200 rural settlements have high-speed access to the Internet. Later, the ministry plans to conduct communication lines in 1 800 villages with a total population of more than 2 million people.

The implementation of the proposed Project is planned for 2018-2020.

As a result, fiber-optic communication lines with a length of 24 000 km will be constructed until 2021. This will provide access to the Internet to local executive bodies and structural subdivisions of state bodies.

The project is planned according to the scheme of public-private partnership with provision of guaranteed consumption of communication services by state bodies for 13 years (2018-2030).

As a result, it is planned to provide Internet access speed of up to 20 megabits per second, and also to connect almost 2 000 schools and about 1 200 points in healthcare institutions and local government agencies.

For the implementation of the MIC project, a road map has been developed and approved, indicating the activities and deadlines for implementation. On the part of telecom operators, work has begun to develop documentation for the competition to determine private partners.