Belarusian pro-democracy actors have already established their presence online. The next step is to use their online venues in order to effectively consolidate agents of democratic change. The Internet , and new ICTs in general are seen as tools for circumventing authoritarian state pressures and surmounting communication cleavage as they allow it allows to significantly reduce the costs associated with political communication generate new ways of interactions between individuals, which in turn produce qualitative effects on political activism.
According to TeleGeography Telekom Austria Group yesterday announced that its Belarusian mobile subsidiary Mobile Digital Communications (Velcom) has been granted a countrywide UMTS license for a purchase price of EUR9.5 million (USD13.2 million).
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has signed the decree which regulates Internet. The decree will come into force on the 1st of July this year.
The number of velcom subscribers grew up by 10,9%, from 3,7 million at the end of 2008 to 4,102 million at the end of 2009, making the userbase growth rate 102 000 of users for the last 1.5 months of the year.