The cost of communication

By BBC News Online's Kate Milner

Communication has never been easy in Mongolia.

The country is nearly three times the size of France but has a population density of 1.5/sq mile, one of the lowest in the world. The Internet seems the natural answer but the problem is less one of infrastructure than the cost of getting online.

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The price to connect is certainly out of reach for most ordinary people. One ISP charges approximately £30 ($50) per month and that does not include the cost of the phone call. The average GDP per capita is £1,359 ($2,250).

That's complicated by the gap between rich and poor. More than one third of the population lives in poverty. Outside the capital Ulaanbaatar, many areas still do not have telephone access.

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP), a United Nations-funded organisation based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is trying to help.

APDIP has launched Citizen Information Service Centers, where citizens in remote Aimags including areas of the Gobi desert, can now connect to the central government, apply for grants on-line, receive news, and obtain basic training in computing.

The first step was a summit designed to explore opportunities through IT. APDIP also set up a cyber café in the UNDP building in Ulaanbaatar, to show people what technology has to offer.

"We want to involve ordinary people," he said. "If they cannot see the vision then we cannot make it work," said Atsushi Yamanaka who works for the UNDP.

"Young people are the ones who have to create this. People are very eager to tap into new technology, but they're not sure of how to best use it.

The programme's long-term aim is to encourage businesses and colleges to take up information technology and to build a culture of open information. It has set targets for the next two to three years and is building an action plan up to 2010.

But Mr Yamanaka said there were still problems in Mongolia following the end of socialism and the country's first democratic elections in July 1990.

"Under socialism there was a train every few days, so people got letters every two days," he said. "Citizens who had everything, all of a sudden they didn't have anything. Now it can take two months for letters to get through.

"The people are suffering a lack of information and a lack of basic services."

But even as new technology takes hold, those in power in Mongolia still have doubts. Changing people's mindset is the hardest part.

"There needs to be a very top-level support." Said Mr Yamanaka. "Email is not seen as an official document. It's not like a paper agreement that you can sign and seal.

"The government is keen to use email but they ask, 'What is its status, how official is it?'"