Translated material
DomNetstroy
The financial crisis of 1998 forced participants in this market to slow down sharply, but now “network” construction has begun to gain momentum again. But still, the sharp decline in the well-being of everyone who wants to have access to the Internet manifested itself in at least two new trends. Firstly, the main development of networks did not come at the expense of the most prosperous strata, and secondly, the most “advanced” projects quietly abandoned the most exotic plans.
A year ago, it was said that schemes like the one chosen in the Blue Bird condominium in Northern Butovo (www.monline.ru/homenet.htm) have commercial prospects. According to the project leaders, representatives of the “normal middle class” live there. It was planned that the houses would be delivered with computer communications and network equipment already installed. It was also assumed that the user would be able to get unlimited access to the Internet, the ability to communicate via the internal network with all connected neighbors, play computer games with them, participate in teleconferences based on interests, receive Sberbank newsletters, order goods at the local Perekrestok supermarket, and sign up for an appointment with a doctor at a local clinic or a manicure at a nearby hairdresser, and also correspond by e-mail with teachers at the school where the children go. We were talking about the cost of connection at the level of 300 USD. and service tariff for unlimited Internet access, amounting to 42 USD. per month.
However, many plans were destined to remain plans. As Evgeniy Velisevich, marketing manager at Monline, says, “the subscription fee turned out to be higher than planned in the business plan, and it did not reach profitability.” The district infrastructure facilities were never connected to the Internet and, after spending more than a month collecting information about them, they abandoned the project altogether, transferring its management to the Astakom operational service (www.bluebird.ru), which limited itself to connecting residents to the Internet via a dedicated channel.
The largest Internet service provider MTU-Intel has followed a similar path, developing home Internet in luxury homes together with the development companies Tema and Don-Stroy. The head of the service development department, Sergei Alimbekov, admitted that there are few “advanced subscribers” among residents and they have to limit themselves to only providing high-speed access to the Network on individual requests. To recoup the industrial connection project, it is necessary to cover at least a third of the residents. Although the price of connection in these houses is two or three times lower than the cost of 1 sq. m. m of living space, the number of applicants is measured in only tens.
Low-budget projects are developing much more actively, as in Bibirevo (www.bibirevo.net/index.htm), where, according to project coordinator Vitaly Kairov, the clientele is mainly student, so the network was created largely on a voluntary basis on its own, and the connecting networks I had to throw it over the roofs of houses.
The Butovo Home Internet project is also developing not according to the standard scheme, but on the basis of the Youth Residential Complex (YRC). The director of the network, Petr Aleksandrov, regrets that the network opened “literally in the days when the crisis began, and not a year earlier or later.” However, in addition to the 128 members of the MWC, two local stores are connected to the network, which have received virtual branches where you can make purchases, as well as a sports and cultural and leisure center. A multimedia directory about clinics, pharmacies, schools, and local government is being prepared on the network’s “home page.”
According to the observations of the executive director of the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies, Dzhan Khan-Magomedov, there is a rapid development of small networks, when in one house “four or five computers are combined into a network.” Large projects are “commercialized or die.” True “smart homes” controlled via the Internet, in his opinion, are a thing of the future. However, it was the Russians working in the Moscow office of the American ThinkWave who created a freely distributed program for online communication between teachers, students and parents.
The developer of the program, Anton Chizhov, explained that this is a “diary journal” open only to these three parties. Parents no longer have to demand a diary from their offspring in order to view assignments and grades. They even have access to a virtual magazine. And the student will no longer make the excuse that he forgot his diary at home...