The Forum was held on April 2-4, 2008 in the Lesnye Dali pension located near Moscow.

The plenary session of the Forum was opened by Dmitri Medvedev, President-Elect of RF. In his report he stressed the strong positions of the modern RUnet in the world Internet; growth of the number of RUnet users, which is more than 40 million people now; growing volume of e-trade market; growing volume of the advertisement market; creation of a number of educational portals in Russia; creation of a number of public services in RUnet; growth of social networks in RUnet.

Dmitri Medvedev made a special emphasis on bridging the digital divide in Russia, especially on reducing the prices for Internet services in the regions. Dmitri Medvedev also concentrated on the issue of Internet governance. He stressed that the government should hold a calm and loyal position here. Balance between freedom of speech and responsibility in the Internet is a delicate issue. Everything that is not a criminal offence should be welcomed in the context of development of the global network. But the law must be always obeyed, also in the Internet, and we cannot allow activities which conflict with the Criminal Codex.

Michail Seslavinsky, Head of Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications, Leonid Reiman, Minister of Information Technologies and Communications, Mark Tverdynin, Chairman of the Board of the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies, representatives of Russian Iinternet community took part in the event.

Leonid Reiman, Minister of Information Technologies and Communications, who delivered a speech for journalists, emphasized that the government pays great attention to the development of the Internet. This year all Russian localities, with population over 500 people, will acquire access to the global network. Leonid Reiman also expressed satisfaction with the fact that Internet is excluded from the list of branches with limited foreign investors’ access.

Yuri Hohlov, Chairman of the IIS Board of Directors, and Sergei Shaposhnik, Head of Directorate on Information Society Development Monitoring, took part in the plenary session of the Forum. After that they presented a joint report on “Russian Internet Development Monitoring” at the section “RUnet Today: Events, Figures, Facts”. The report showed analysis of factors relevant for Internet development, which are available from different sources – state and departmental statistics (Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of RF, Rosstat), sociological services, analytical companies. Methodological problems of measurement of different aspects of Internet use in Russia and actual goals of organization of statistical observation of its development were examined in the report. In the course of discussion attention of the participants was drawn to the statistics of the Internet development in Russia in comparison to the international data, including results of IIS own researches.

Sources: PR service of ROCIT, ITAR-TASS, Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications of RF.

Permanent link for the Russian version of the original news: http://2008.rif.ru/news/24/