State-owned national telecoms operator Beltelecom has announced that it is stopping the provision of commercial dial-up internet access services from 1 February 2017. In a website update, the operator informed existing users of the narrowband service that from that date they will have to consider switching to its high speed broadband offer ‘byfly’ instead.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Beltelecom reported a total of 2.99 million fixed broadband subscribers at 30 September 2016, up from 2.96 million three months earlier, including 956,500 Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) fibre connections, compared to 818,800 at end-June. The telco is aggressively pushing its GPON deployment, and in February 2016 said it was embarking on a four-year network transformation plan to migrate its entire Minsk customer base from copper wire to fibre by 2020.