AKIPRESS.COM - Uzbekistan improved its position in the annual report of the  Freedom House human rights organization "Freedom of the Net 2014".

This year, Uzbekistan's freedom of the Internet is ranked 79th and it is still "not free".

Since May 2013, Uzbekistan's government has taken further measures to intensify its grip over internet connectivity. The state-owned telecommunications carrier, Uztelecom, continues to monopolize the country’s internet access, making it a highly profitable state enterprise with no liberalization in sight.

In July 2013, the government revoked the right of private ISPs to provide internet access in libraries, schools, universities, and youth and cultural institutions, granting this right exclusively to Uztelecom.

Competitive conditions have also deteriorated for mobile phone companies, in particular for the two foreign GSM operators that continue to provide mobile and broadband services after the government expropriated a subsidiary of the Russian MTS last year. Citing concerns over the reliability, stability, and adaptability of mobile networks to information security concerns, the government has taken steps transform Uztelecom's CDMA operator, Uzmobile, into a national mobile phone operator with a target of 8 million subscribers by the end of 2017. These developments raised concerns about an intensification of state censorship and surveillance on telecommunications and mobile broadband networks.

The environment for internet users’ rights in Uzbekistan remains one of the most restrictive in Central Asia. The Uzbek authorities block access to a wide range of websites and control content available at cultural and educational institutions through the intranet, ZyioNET, and the national search engine at www.uz.

The government also employs extensive surveillance measures to monitor online activity and frequently uses trumped-up charges to target individuals who publish material online that is deemed antithetical to the government’s interests.

In 2013, one internet user was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for establishing online communications with an exile opposition group via Skype, Facebook and the Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru, and for distributing materials on the group's orders that were perceived as violating the constitutional order.

Stringent control of the internet is expected during the parliamentary elections in December 2014 and the presidential elections in 2015. Already in the fall of 2013, political turmoil around the president's daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and her active use of Twitter, presumably led to intensified control of social networks by the National Security Service (NSS).