Users complain about interruptions in access to YouTube

Baku/12.02.10/Turan: Starting from February 9, Azerbaijan had problems in accessing users to the YouTube service.

As users on social networks note, access is difficult from various browsers.

“Two days on YouTube the videos do not open. I thought the problem was in the browser, deleted it and reloaded it, but the result is the same. Apparently someone is blocking access to YouTube,” a user named Veli Guliyev told Turan.

Aval Zeynalli, editor of the Xural website, also reported problems with access to YouTube. “From the day of the election, we can’t go live on our YouTube channel. In recent days, the speed of the Internet has dropped dramatically. Our provider is KTV, but other providers have similar problems,” said Zeynalli.

The provider of City Net denied the allegations of blocking.

“There are just problems in YouTube itself. Therefore, many users have difficulties,” the provider’s representative told Turan.

The head of the press service of the Ministry of Communications Gunel Gezyalova told Turan that she does not have information about problems with access to YouTube in the last three days. According to her, no user complaints have been received.

Media expert Alesker Mammadli said access difficulties are possible with mass downloads when many users log onto one transmitter at once.

Azerbaijan has a problem with the speed of the Internet, but in a number of cases, such as during a protest rally on October 19 last year, the Internet was massively disconnected by providers and mobile operators.  

It is possible that in recent days, with the dissemination of a large volume of video frames on the parliamentary elections, restrictive measures have been taken,” Mammadli said.

If such a step was taken, then this is a violation of the law and the Constitution, as well as article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, this is a violation of the terms of the contract between the provider and the user.

According to the data of KasperskyLab in 2018, the number of regular YouTube users in Azerbaijan is 97% of the number of Internet users, of which 7 million 991 thousand are in Azerbaijan. In general, 79.8% of the country's population use the Internet. –21B06-