Internet and society: Results of the Russian Internet forum “RIF + KIB 2012”

The largest spring event of the Runet - the Russian Internet-forum “RIF+KIB” has completed.

By tradition, the opening of the RIF + KIB passed in the format of the review of industry reports on the State of Runet today. According to the Fund “Public Opinion”, a monthly audience of the Runet is 57, 8 million of people – and the figures are still growing, and an annual increase is 15%. The daily rate is 44, 3 million of people – demonstrates the annual growth of about 22%. The coverage of the Internet in Russia (49%) is still below the level of West- European countries (average level 78%). Today the 76% of the Runet audience use Internet every day, and the percentage of mobile access is 34%. As for the audience size Russia occupies the 6th place in the world and it is the leader in Europe. There is still an active role of the regions where within the year the growth rate was 16%. The mobile Internet is used actively: its audience is growing twice as stationary.

There were also announced economic indicators: THE RUSSIAN Internet market has grown by 56% in a year and it may well be recognized at the most dynamic market in Europe.

Among the achievements of the Runet experts noted the following:

- The search systems in Russia respond  to 350 million questions a day (compared to 250 million a year ago)

- Russia is the 5th country in the world’s largest audience of postal services

-  The number of registered domain names: .RU – 3 779 285; .РФ - 795 749; .SU - 103 407. There were filed applications for domain zones: MOSCOW и .МОСКВА, .ДЕТИ, .РУС.

- Startup Genome put Moscow on the 10th place on the ecosystem of startups, and the amount of investments in Russian Internet startups totaled $750 million in 2011.

- During the year Russia has risen in the world ranking of information technologies development from 77th to 56th position. 

- The event of the year – WebVybory 2012, the nationwide project, for the first time realized in Russia and the world.

Today Russia is the leader in Europe by the Internet audience, and the Internet in small towns and villages is as available as in larger cities. The sales of smart phones are growing to 75-85 % in the quarter – the Runet is on the verge of rapid growth of users of mobile Internet and most users in Russia access the Internet from their mobile devices.

According to forecasts, by the end of 2014 the number of Internet-users will be about 80 million, or 71% of the country population over 18 years.

The Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at his video conference adressed to the participants. He drew attention to the importance of many issues discussed at the Forum: the development of Internet business, training and start-up development, regulation of networks, relations between the state and society on the network, Internet development in the regions and many others.

After the opening the participants were able to join to one of the nine program streams of the conference. One of the novelties at the Forum was the Holding of so-called “Battle-show”, in the course of which took place 3 topic-rounds, united by the common name “Where the Russian Internet goes to”. The role of “referee” was playing the Minister of communications and mass communications Igor Schegolev, who moderated the discussion.

“During the 3 days of the Forum about 8000 people visited the area and more than 30 thousand people watched the online-broadcasting. RIF+KIB brought together Runet people from 170 different towns of Russia: Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Oryol, Yakutsk and others. Because of the increased interest to Runet, we were joined by foreign colleagues from France, England, the USA, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark and neighboring countries”, - summed up Sergey Plugotarenko, the director of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC).