Internet and society: The major achievements of Runet in 2011 announced

The Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications in joint effort with the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) and RIA Novosti organized “The perspectives of Runet development in 2012” press-conference on 22 November, 2011.

According to experts of the RIA Novosti press-conference, the most important achievements of Runet in 2011 were a serious increase of the number of Russian Internet users, development of domain zone .rf and participation of major Russian Internet companies on the exchange.

According to ComScore research company, in September 2011 Russia for the first time passed Germany by the number of Internet users and became the European leader by this indicator. According to ComScore there were 50,8 million of unique Internet users over 15 years of age in Russia in September.

Another important result of the 2011 for Runet was the development of domain zone .rf. In spite the fact that the open registration of domains in the zone began back in November 2010, it was in 2011 that the .rf zone demonstrated its viability and proved a positive trends of increase.

According to Andrey Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center of the National domain of Internet, there are about 931, 000 names registered in the .rf zone. The mark of 1 million names should be reached the next year.

The Center director noted that the Center is now developing a new project – the .deti (children) domain zone. The zone will be a protected space for children and will contribute to the development of children’s content in Runet.

Sergey Plugotarenko, Director of the RAEC, believes that another important achievement of Runet in 2011 is a great increase of the number of mobile users and the development of mobile Internet, as well as the increase of the number of Internet users who live in small towns and villages. It is important that not only the number of users is increasing in Russia but also their activeness. According to Sergey Plugotarenko, 43 million users address the Internet daily, 11 million of them use mobile devices.

Another achievement of 2011 according to Director of the RAEC is the increase of the number of users who consider Internet the main source of information – there are already 25% of them.

Sergey Plugotarenko also underlined the activization of work to change the legislation in the field of copyright protection in Internet. According to him, the principles advanced by Dmitry Medvedev, the President of Russia, in his message to the leaders of G20 in early November, need to be realized as soon as possible.

The press conference “Runet: main results of 2011 and perspectives of development in 2012” was held on the eve of the eighth awarding ceremony of the national prize “Runet prize” for contribution to the development of the Russian segment of the Internet to be held on 25 November.