Development of the ICT infrastructure in Russia in 2014

Internet traffic in 2014 has increased by almost a third (29%); the volume of mobile networks’ traffic grew by 3%. The current level of Russian ICT infrastructure allowed to significantly increase availability of network technologies and services provided on their basis, including public services: one third of the population (35%) who have used public services in 2014 have done so via the Internet. This is reported in the ISSEK newsletter presenting the results of the HSE ongoing “Information Society Monitoring” project.

The level of information society’s development is primarily determined by the level of the information and telecommunications infrastructure in the country (ICT infrastructure), its potential to provide high-quality access to information, and electronic interactions between economic actors (individuals, public authorities, companies, social organisations).

ICT infrastructure is developed, and communication services are provided, by telecommunications organisations. These currently employ about 435 thousand people (1% of the total employment in the economy). The share of the Russian GDP created in this sector in 2014 was 1.6%.

Development trends in the Russian telecommunications sector are generally in line with the global ones, which is evidence of direct connection between the current state of the country’s economy and the consumer spending on telecommunication services.

As to the structure of telecommunication services’ revenues, 42% is generated by mobile communications, 21% by electronic transfer of documents, 17% by data connections and pass-through, 14% by local, long-distance, intra-area and international telephone calls, and 5% by radio communications, radio and TV broadcasting, and satellite communications.

Mobile broadband internet access became the main development area for mobile communications: the number of subscribers to this service by the end of 2014 has reached 92.8 million — 3.7 times more than the number of landline broadband internet access subscribers (24.9 million). Annual growth of the number of subscribers to mobile broadband internet access in 2013 was 14%, and in 2014 — 8%; the relevant figures for landline broadband access were 15 and 5%, respectively (figure 1).

41% of all subscribers to landline broadband internet access have connection speed over 10 Mb/s. In 2013, this figure grew by 1.5 times.

Growth of tariffs for fixed telephone communications against the background of decreasing prices for internet access and mobile communications resulted in a more narrow gap between internet access subscription costs and the unlimited local calls tariff — from 1.7 times in 2010 to 1.4 times in 2014. Differentiation of mean tariffs for mobile and fixed telephone communications (ratio of mean mobile local calls tariff per minute to landline local calls tariff per minute) in 2014 was 2.5 times, compared with 7 times in 2010.

In terms of the number of wireless broadband internet access subscribers per 100 population (60 in 2013), Russia is ahead of Canada (58), France (56), and Czech Republic (54). Still, it significantly lags behind the leaders – the Russian figure is twice as low as Finland’s (124) and Japan’s (121). As to the landline broadband internet access, the gap with the leader (Sweden) is 2.6 times (figure 2).

Sources: HSE data book “Information Society Indicators in the Russian Federation: 2015»; Measuring the Information Society 2014. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union;http://www.fedstat.ru/indicators/start.do;http://minsvyaz.ru/ru/activity/statistic.