IT and Society: Russia boasts its rapidly increasing role in Internet development

In his address to participants of 1st Eurasian Network Operators Forum, June 6-8 2011, Moscow, the Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev highlighted Russia’s rapidly growing role in development of global Web and its influence on its governance.

“Russia has initiated measures for sustainable governance of Internet development”, the Minister stressed, reminding that “we have become pioneers in implementing domains in national languages”. Igor Shchegolev believes that “Russia is becoming a major forum enabling the dialogue between global and regional Internet expert community, by setting vector of further Internet development”. The Minister said Russia intended to further consolidate its positions on the world Internet-stage.

Director of the Coordination Center for TLD RU Andrei Kolesnikov provided the following statistics: in 2010 Russia had about 18 million broadband subscribers, 34% of all households. For the past 5 years this rate has increased elevenfold. “We are now living in the country, which by the dynamics of Internet subscribers growth is occupying one of the top positions in Europe”, A. Kolesnikov said. He also added that unlike Europe, where Internet penetration level is approaching saturation, Russia “has very serious prospects of growth, and this is good news for investors”.

Statistics of the Coordination Center for TLD RU reads that 60 million Russians surf the Internet at least on a monthly basis. “We expect that by 2014 approx. 80 million people in Russia will be Net surfers, Andrei Kolesnikov said. – We hope to become an advanced European country judging by the number of Internet subscribers, the leader of the European market”. He stated that the favorable conditions of Russian Internet are proved by recent successful IPOs Mail.ru Group and “Yandex”, and a key to success is the fact that Russia lacks strict regulation of the web. However he suggested that the global web due to its influence on political processes may suffer strict regulation in future.