The presentation of analytical report was attended by Nikolay Nikiforov, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation,  Mikhal Rutkovski, Director and Permanent Representative of the World Bank in Russia, Carlo Rossotto, Coordinator of ICT related programs in Europe and Central Asia, Global Practice, Transport and ICT, World Bank,  Yury Hohlov, Chairman of the IIS Board of Directors, and Sergey Shaposhnik,  Head of IIS Directorate of Monitoring Information Society Development, Alexander Ponkin, Director of Department of Infrastructure Projects of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, and representatives of telecom operators – OJSC “Rostelecom”, OJSC “Mobile TeleSystems”, OJSC “Megafon”, OJSC “Vympelkom”, etc.

Opening the event Nikolay Nikiforov, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, thanked colleagues from the World Bank for paying attention to ongoing reforms in the sphere of communications in Russia and reported on key stages constituting the reform of the communications sphere, which were completed by the Ministry in the past two years.

"We see that based on 2014 results and according to official statistics of the Federal State Statistics Service, 64% of residents have facilities for broadband internet access.  Increase in a year is 7,5%. But it needs to be understood that every next percent is much more difficult to gain, — said Nikolay Nikoforov — We are moving to smaller populated places. This is more complicated to install cables by geographic and geological reasons. And it is impossible without special solutions, special approach”.

The Minister mentioned that the biggest in the world engineering project for fiber optics communication lines to sparsely populated areas in Russia is being implemented, and within its framework 2015 thousand km of communication lines will be constructed. He also reported on the first results of introduction of the principle of technologic neutrality, on principle of co-utilization of communications infrastructures, on commissioning procedure for low-powered base stations, on the new method of calculation of fees for radio-frequency spectrum, and on the situation with access of telecom operators to apartment houses.

Then the welcoming speech was delivered by Mikhal Rutkovski, Director and Permanent Representative of the World Bank in Russia, who noted significant progress in the development of broadband communications and superfast broadband access to internet in Russia. At the same time he noted that a number of problems related to development of competition in the segment of market and to maintaining stable market environment for telecommunications providers exist.  He also noted that despite political decisions made in Russia the state still needs to make efforts and to regulate connection of populated places located in zones of zero or negative profitability to information infrastructures and providing wide bang access services.

In the course of the presentation of the analytical report Carlo Rossotto, Coordinator of ICT related programs in Europe and Central Asia, Global Practice, Transport and ICT, World Bank, said: "When we were conceiving this report, we understood that Russia can serve as example of broadband access development to other countries, considering high level of penetration of broadband access on such a wide territory. The analysis of superfast access confirmed that in 2014 the number of Russian subscribers, which are connected to fiber optic lines, exceeded the same indicator in all other EU countries all together”. He also noted that average connection speed in Russia exceeded rates of France and Italy.

The second part of the event involved a panel discussion, which was moderated by Yury Hohlov, Chairman of the IIS Board of Directors. Two reports were presented for discussion. A report on "Development of broadband access in Russia and overcoming of information (digital) divide” was made by Alexander Ponkin, Director of Department of Infrastructure Projects of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. International experience in implementation of national plans on broadband access development was covered by Carlo Rossotto and Juan Navas-Sabater, Head of Programs in the sphere of Stable Development in Russia of the World Bank.

Text of the research in English is available on the web-site of the World Bank.