Uztelecom Explains How the Telecom Operator Is Becoming a Digital Ecosystem
Jahangir Adilov, Director of the Marketing Department at Uztelecom, told The Mag in an interview why the national telecom operator is charging electric vehicles, issuing insurance policies, and helping find repair technicians; which areas the company avoids; and what telecommunications will look like in five years.
The starting point is a simple change: connectivity is no longer a scarcity. Today, almost everyone has internet access, and speeds have increased by one and a half times over the past year. According to Adilov, connectivity has followed the fate of any successful infrastructure: when it works as it should, people simply stop noticing it.
"Electricity was once a miracle, too, but today we only remember it when it’s gone. Is the company offended by this? Perhaps. But it’s actually a sign that the job is done," he says.
In such a situation, the operator faces a fork in the road: remain just a connectivity provider or build new services on top of its network. Most telecom companies worldwide choose the latter: among the largest, the share of services beyond connectivity has grown from 18% to 28% of revenue over seven years. At Uztelecom, the top manager says, the approach was not driven by the search for new income but by the "Digital Uzbekistan – 2030" strategy: everyday tasks should be resolved quickly and uniformly, whether in Tashkent or Nukus.
This led the company to develop seven new directions. Among them are the Telecom Charge charging station network, the HAMROH app for drivers, insurance in partnership with ALSKOM, the Smart Services handyman service, AI Vision video analytics, the UzCloud Hub cloud environment for businesses, and services for travelers. Many of these emerged not from a plan but from observing how people actually behave. The most illustrative example is the charging stations.
"We built Telecom Charge as a national network: a single tariff, a single account, and stations in different cities. A beautiful idea. But then we looked at our own data and saw that over 40% of customers always charge at the same station. Not 'within our network'—at a specific outlet near home or work. It turns out we thought we were building a network, but for the user, we built an ATM: people go to the nearest ATM, not their favorite one," Adilov explains.
After this, the company stopped mapping the country and began installing stations where people live and work: in specific districts and parking lots.
Every car comes with a trail of tasks: fines, insurance, and vehicle history before purchase. All of this is gathered in the HAMROH app. Its navigator is connected to Tashkent’s traffic light management system and shows how many seconds remain until the next green light at the nearest intersection. HAMROH already has over 300,000 users. It also includes a feature for a very everyday situation: you can pre-record who took the car, when, and for how long, to avoid later family disputes over whose fines they are.
Where is the line between what the operator takes on and what it doesn’t? At Uztelecom, there’s a simple filter: a new direction makes sense only if it’s clear why a person would turn to the operator for it. The answer 'we have a large subscriber base' doesn’t work: the base helps deliver the product to people quickly but doesn’t make it necessary. That’s why Uztelecom didn’t become an insurer. The policy is issued by the insurance company ALSKOM, while the operator ensures the process takes a few minutes on the phone rather than half a day in a queue.
Uztelecom approaches artificial intelligence just as pragmatically. The company receives many proposals with the AI prefix, but not all of them offer real value. The test is simple: remove the word AI from the description and see if the task remains. If the product has nothing to offer without the trendy term, it’s unnecessary.
The same principle guides solutions for businesses. AI Vision video analytics addresses a very real problem: a person monitoring surveillance screens starts missing half of what happens after about twelve minutes, while the system tracks continuously and automatically alerts to smoke or growing queues. The UzCloud Hub cloud environment consolidates what a typical company spends four or five separate subscriptions on: email, video calls, files, and access. Payment is made in Uzbekistani sums, and the electronic signature is built right in.
Services for private clients are gathered in the Uztelecom app. Its active audience grew by 21% over the year, reaching 2.3 million people per month, while the number of services inside increased from five to nineteen. But why do people actually open the app: to buy a plane ticket or to check their data balance? The top manager’s answer is honest:
"More often the latter, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Our most visited screen is the main one, followed by details, then tariffs and packages. The average time spent in the app is about six minutes, and I consider this a good indicator, not a bad one: no one dreams of spending time in a telecom operator’s app; everyone wants to resolve their issue and leave. So we don’t focus on minutes but on how many different tasks fit into those six minutes.
According to Adilov, Uztelecom can no longer be called just a telecom operator: the company is moving toward a digital ecosystem. But connectivity remains the foundation: fiber optics, mobile networks, data centers, and cloud capacities are what the company works on every day. Only the number of 'floors' that can be built on it is changing. He doesn’t dare predict what the next ones will be: five years ago, he wouldn’t have named charging stations or handyman services. But he’s confident there will be noticeably more directions.
Read the full interview with Jahangir Adilov in The Mag.
