In Moscow, Russian Internet Week (RIW 2015) has opened in Expocentre today. RIW is a platform that brings together professionals from three fields – telecommunications, media and Internet. At the RIW 2015 opening ceremony that was hosted by Andrey Vorobyev, the Coordination Center CEO, a lot was said about the necessity for a dialogue between the industries, as well as a dialogue between society, state and business.
Andrey Vorobyev called RIW 2015 “a rehearsal of the end-of-the-year review” and proposed to analyze everything that has been done over the past year. He said that one of the most important events last year was the creation of the Internet Development Institute (IRI) that was announced a year ago.
Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation Nikolai Nikiforov made a speech at the opening ceremony of RIW. He highlighted that RIW is a platform where the synergy of three industries – telecom, media and Internet - is clearly visible. He said that the state is one of the main investors of telecommunications and Internet industry: the pace at which the fiber is installed in the most remote settlements suggests that in the upcoming years 37 million of Russian citizens will be connected to the Internet. Minister named ensuring the fail-safe function of the Russian Internet and increasing government’s participation in management of the critically important network infrastructure to be the most important topics at the moment. Nikolai Nikiforov talked in detail about the contract between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce and highlighted that necessity to ensure equal access of all countries to Internet infrastructure management.
Chairman of ROCIT board of directors, deputy of the State Duma, the Chairman of the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, Leonid Levin also drew attention to the principles on which the Internet should function – transparency, accessibility, freedom, security and trust. He said that the road map of the Russian Internet development supposes that many new laws would appear and that IRI, according to Leonid Levin, is the best platform to use for discussion.
Alexander Zharov – the head of Roskomnadzor, Mikhail Tolkachev – Deputy General Director at ZAO “Expocentre”, German Klimenko – Chairman of the Council of IRI, Kirill Varlamov – FRII Director, Yuliana Slascheva – General Director at CTC Media, Alexander Provorotov – General Director at Tele2, Dmitri Chernishenko – General Director at AO Gazprom-Media Holding and a member of the board of directors, Alexei Basov – VP at Rostelecom, Ruslan Ibragimov – a board member at MTS, Danny Perekaslky – General Director at Ozon.ru and Ilya Massuh – the head of the Information Democracy Foundation.
