On December 4 in the big conference hall of the Moscow Government tenth anniversary Peering forum is to be held. It is organized by MSK-IX with the support of industry firms.
Tenth forum was the biggest in the history of the event – more than 900 people registered this year. Russian and foreign telecom operators, Internet companies, providers of online services and software, telecom equipment manufacturers participated in the event. Some of the companies have worldwide reputation, for example ICANN, Yandex, Google, RIPE NCC, Rostelecom, Extreme Networks and many others.
The final part of the forum was a roundtable “Substituting imported ICT: perspective and reality check”. It was moderated by Andrei Kolesnikov, CEO at Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ. Evgeniya Vasilenko (Software Publishers Association “National Software”), Igor Zhukov (Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies), Natalya Kaspersky (InfoWatch), Vladimir Rubanov (ROSA Laboratory), Vitaly Slizen (Inoventica) and Vartan Khachaturov (The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media).
The moderator invited participants to discuss what are critical elements for the operators and what they lack to be independent from the import. Vitaly Slizen drew attention to the fact that the volume of equipment production is dictated by the market and it’s almost impossible for the national producer to compete on price with American and German companies: “we only serve the Russian market, but these companies for a long time now work for the whole world, the volumes are incomparable.” Natalya Kaspersky believes that it is necessary to use all possible ways – copy existing production, develop breakthrough technologies and existing ones. At the same time in Natalya Kaspersky’s opinion import substitution is impossible without government support and a specialized program is required. Vartan Khachaturov talked about this as well, he considers that government support should be reasonable and the best regulator in the market.
The topic of import substitution was of vital importance for all meeting participants: speakers and listeners. During the lively discussion industry representatives shared their problems and ideas, discussed possibilities to apply this or that equipment, expressed opinions concerning government initiatives. “It’s great that our roundtable discussion caused such interest among participants of the Peering forum. This is a very difficult process, populism here is unacceptable. It is clear that import substitution concerns everyone and today we managed to get closer to understand how this can be done and what difficulties we may face”, concluded Andei Kolesnikov.
