Overview

The Internet reached Estonia and Latvia through research and education in 1990. The pace of growth has been very quick. For example, the number of hosts has tripled with each year in both countries. Right now, over a half of the hosts belong to the commercial sphere. Laying the stress upon education has created a large number of educated specialists in this field that is an important precondition of expanding the usage of information technology in governmental and commercial organizations.  Targets of information technolgy in Latvia and Estonia are mainly governmental organizations. Several foundations and aid projects pay an important role in providing information technology for research and the educational community. Considering indirect indicators, investments in the commercial sphere are at least as large. Various commercial Internet providers have arisen during the last two years, and almost all regions of Estonia and Latvia have access to their services, creating a possibility for rapid development.

To maintain the freedom of the Internet, there are still few things that must be managed centrally, like unique address assignment, consistent naming, and sometimes sound financing of common infrastructure. Several international and national organizations provide these services to the Internet community. In Latvia most of centralized Internet services are provided by LATNET. LATNET was the operator of almost all Latvian international Internet lines during 1996. Two charts showing the growth of the LATNET's international traffic are given below. The figures are in terms of percentage of the traffic in January 1996 (3).
 
 

The total incoming traffic was more than three times larger than the outgoing traffic.  The use of the Internet in Latvia grew roughly 2.5 times during the first eight months of 1996. However, outgoing traffic also grew more than twice. The growth of the capacity of the Riga-Stockholm line, Latvia's main international connection at that time, accounted for the growth in incoming traffic. The incoming traffic utilized maximum capacity available. The outgoing traffic was less dependent on local events on the Latvian Internet (2).
 
 

The following list contains information on providers that offer commercial and private users connetion to the Internet (1):
 

Organization	Last Update
Balcom	15-Jan-1996
ElCom	23-Nov-1996
Apollo/Lattelekom	25-Mar-1997
Bank Communications Center	25-Mar-1997
Bilteks	16-Dec-1996
LANET	18-Sept-1996
LATNET	16-Dec-1996
LvNet-Teleport	04-May-1999
NeoNets	23-Jul-1998
PARKS	04-May-1999
VERSIA	22Jul-1998

The traffic within Latvia is free. The incoming international traffic is charged. Usually, the outgoing international traffic is not charged. However, if the outgoing traffic is larger than the incoming traffic, the line's user pays for the difference. The following is a list of Internet Services in 1997 and 1998 (4):
 
 

	End 1997	End 1998
Number of Internet domestic users	5,000	8,000
Number of Internet domestic users per 1000 inh	2.0	3.3
Number of Internet professional users	35,000	72,000
Hostcount by DNS domains	7,100	14,300
Hostcount by DNS domains per 1000 inh	2.9	5.8
Number of accces providers	18	23
Estmation of Internet penetration rate in companies	18.0%	34.0%
Estimation of Intranet penetration rate in companies	2.0%	3.0%

Sources: RIPE Hostcount, analysis of the market fr information services and expert estimation.
 

Telecommunications	Privatization and Deregulation	Internet Activity	Electronic Commerce
Hardware Manufacturing	Software Development	IT Usage	IT Labor Market
IT Geographics	IT Financing	Government Policies	Legal Environment
IT Strengths and Weaknesses	Impact on Business	Sources and Links	About the Authors

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