The FINANCIAL — The nightmare that internet users in Georgia have been experiencing because of endless interruptions to internet supply will finally come to an end on May 15, the company’s management promises.
Genadi Rostomauli, Commercial Director of Caucasus Online, the leading Georgian internet provider, says the problems currently connected with their internet providing are due to ongoing works on the fibrous cable internet project financed by EBRD. Rostomauli notes that the customers will be compensated for the days they were not able to connect to the web.
Meanwhile Konstantin Stalinsky, director of Info Tech, says, “The reason for the interruption is the old cables that Caucasus Online is using in Tbilisi. Fibrous internet is still on its way, currently only reaching Poti though.”
The problems with internet supply lasted for one whole week from April 27 to May 1. However Rostomauli claims that Caucasus stopped supplying customers for only three hours on Wednesday, April 29. “Still if we compare the works that we have conducted in Bulgaria and Romania with the interruptions of supplies here, they are minimal,” Rostomauli says.
“The Caucasus Online cable connects Bulgaria with Georgia, the cable reaching Tbilisi. Currently we are widening our scale in order to reach Frankfurt. This is connected with different types of switches. There are lots of cables which cause problems,” Rostomauli declares.
Stalinsky believes that insuring customers with an uninterrupted internet can be managed after switching Tbilisi to Poti. “In this case Tbilisi will be supplied with real European internet with the speed of terabytes.”
In the project of receiving fibrous internet from Frankfurt EBRD invested USD 35 million.
Last month users of the Caucasus Network were unable to download videos from the youtube.com website. Rumours spread that the company had blocked the website as it actively promotes its own analogue, a clone of youtube – tvali.ge.
Rostomauli says this is not true and that “Caucasus Online does not own any websites besides its official company page. “tvali.ge is not under the ownership of Caucasus,” Rostomauli says. Despite this though, on the official website of tvali.ge it is stated that the website is “a new video portal of Caucasus Online”. Another website, banners.ge, says that tvali.ge, avoe.ge, gol.ge and another eleven websites belong to Caucasus Internet Media Group, “Daughter Company of Caucasus Online”, so The FINANCIAL was told by Kate Nachkebia, Advertising Manager of the Group.
The list of websites owned by Caucasus Media Group includes top.ge, a website that provides ratings of Georgian internet resources, but as it is becoming clear the leading domains on top.ge belong to the same groups owned by Caucasus Online.
Another reason for customer dissatisfaction towards CO is the poor client service of the company. As Stalinsky says, for him as a customer it’s a major reason for dissatisfaction being made to wait for company operators for more than 10-15 minutes when calling the company’s helpline.
“Another issue is that when you can’t reach an operator, a pre-recorded message informs you that this is down to global problems they are experiencing,” Stalinsky says.
“In defence of the pre-recorded message I will cite the words of Winston Churchill when he said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Of course, this causes dissatisfaction among customers but this is the best method for such times. From the very beginning we have been telling customers the truth in that the problem is not concerning any modem or phase, but down to global problem,” Rostamauli says.
Written By Madona Gasanova
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