Russia: Networked Society

Readiness for a country depends upon the communities within it that are wired and ready. This means that for the country to become a developing nation, the population must understand or even possess any direct knowledge of the Internet or other telecommunications in order to become a profitable experience. Most of the difficulty for a community to become versed on the Internet is to be able to read a web page in their native tongue and is the first major hurdle in Internet usage because the user may not understand American English (the most common language on the Internet). The Internet must appeal to a population that is not primarily males between the ages of 18 and 35 by offering portals for unconventional users (handicapped, women, or elderly). Telecommunications such as faxes, pagers, and cellular technology are all factors in whether a society is developing.

People and Organizations Online (Stage 2.5)

“The poor state of the telecommunications infrastructure is one of the reasons why the Internet has been slow to take off in Russia. Low home computer use, high fees and a primitive payments system are the others. Estimates of Internet usage vary. The Ministry of Telecommunications claims that Internet usage doubled in 2001, rising from 4m to 8m. According to the official data, corporate users account for around two-thirds of Internet usage and, as with other forms of telecommunications, usage is heavily concentrated in Moscow and St Petersburg. Nonetheless, Russia's other main urban centers--Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar, Vladivostok, Irkutsk and Nizhny Novgorod--also saw a rapid increase in Internet use “4.1.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates the number of current Internet users in Russia at six million for the year ending 2003. The number of hosts totaled over 600,000, with the number of hosts per 10 thousand inhabitants came in at 42. Although there are over 10 Million computers in Russia (2003), there are only about 9 per 10 thousand inhabitants4.1. According to the Russian Ministry of Telecommunications, the projected number of Internet users doubled between 2000 and 20014.2. This Internet usage is spread throughout the country differently according to specific regions (appendix 4.A).
Women account for 43% of the total Internet population (appendix 4.D)4.3. 57% of Russia’s Internet users in 2003 were 18-34 years old4.3. Information on people with disabilities accessing the Internet was spotty at best to calculate.

Locally Relevant Content (Stage 3)

A networked society that maintains web sites that is relative to the local community and written in a native language is a major step towards development. When the Internet is more local to its native community it promotes acceptance to the general user without a language barrier. The Russian Federation has a considerable amount of local sites that are written in native tongues. The Internet is catered to the population in quantity of web servers and listservs4.10. A personal trip through some Russian workgroups and newsletters revealed that this nation is developing at a rapid rate as compared to just four years ago4.5. Currently, the Russian consulate, consumer pages, and newsletters are all written in their native tongue. About 95% of the Russian speaking web pages are local to the country4.9.

Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life (Stage 2)

Prior to the end of the Soviet regime, the telecommunications market was controlled entirely by the state. The eventual messages that were sent via the nation’s backbone at that time were usually a governmental memo that pertained to the economy or political policy. The saturation of telephones in 1991 was 33%4.8.
The Internet has progressed into households recently enough to indicate a consumer presence. Although the average monthly salary of a typical Russian employee is almost as much as a one-month subscription to the Internet, there are still rising numbers of home users. According to the MASMI research group, in 2003, 46% of Russia’s Internet users made an online purchase at least once. Most of the purchases were books or videos and consisted of cash on delivery4.4. In fact, most commercial payments made over the Internet in Russia are either cash on delivery with a courier or purchase online with the notion of picking up the merchandise in a specified area. This limitation of fewer than 10% of the Russian targeted local consumer owning a credit or debit card forces the businesses to become far more creative in getting the goods to market4.7.

According to 2001 data:
Number of telephone main lines (per 100 people) 19.9
Number of mobile subscribers (per 100 people) 5.3
Number of Internet users (per 100 people) 1.7
Number of personal computers (per 1,000 people) 49.6
Source: http://www.ebusinessforum.com/index.asp?layout=newdebi&country_id=RU&country=Russia&channelid=6&title=Doing+e-business+in+Russia

The rise in telecommunications in Russia has mobile cellular technology besting the number of landlines by at least one million subscribers4.6. This is an indication that the infrastructure isn’t as robust as the United States, but it is growing. The amount of public telephones has remained constant while businesses continue to increase in the industrial areas. The telecommunications infrastructure has received a large share of foreign investments, but is considered obsolete for the demand that has accumulated over the past several years4.1.
In Moscow, the number of individuals with a telephone at home is 97%, where the rest of the country is at 43%4.1. According to the same article, Russia needs to spend US$40 billion dollars to meet new subscriber needs.

Information and Communication Technologies in the Workplace (Stage 2.5)

Although the Internet has progressed into the Russian household, users access the Internet mostly from the workplace. It has already been established that most Internet usage is from the major cities that have a business presence. These cities are mainly Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have a large youth and university setting to educate the individuals to benefit from this knowledge4.3.
Businesses are starting to crop up in the Former Soviet Union that are outsourced from developed nations because the cost benefits help struggling organizations. Internet use is particularly high in the workplace and at home (appendix 4.B). Internet usage at home has surpassed that of educational institutions indicating the nation is developing as a consumer driven market, allowing advertising to exist and occupy web pages and promoting eCommerce.
Web services on Internet web providers account for the highest population of web traffic within present day Russia. The trends of different Internet usage table (appendix 4.C), a one-month documentation trail for Internet usage of selected Russian web sites was held in 2002. The resultant information indicated that the most frequent web server hits were that of privately held Internet service providers rather than governmental sites. This one characteristic indicates that this developing nation is continuing its growth into an eCommerce nation. The table listed in appendix 4.C ranks the most visited sites over a one-month period that demonstrates the private sector popularity.

Recommendations:

Russia should focus on educating the population on the use of the Internet because it would be a great vessel for bringing the former Soviet Union into the present and may make it profitable. Russia should look to a country not too far from it and model their growth and profitability off of India. It has already been stated in this paper that the former Soviet Union is basically where India was ten years ago. The telecommunication industry should be given financial incentives to reach out further to the average citizen and offer competitive rates to them. The government may also sponsor/host organizations willing to take on the workload of other developed nations so as to bring in revenue to the republic. Rewards for startup software companies that primarily do business with overseas accounts should be lucrative enough to allow survival in the global economy. As was described in Networked learning, the amount of money spent on a youth for web-based learning is a positive growth factor because that enables the younger generation to become familiar with telecommunications and the Internet so as to succeed via attrition.