"Obrazovaniye" is launched: the first school is connected

The national project "Obrazovaniye" (Education) assumes the connection to the Internet of over 50,000 educational establishments throughout the country by the end of 2007, over half of which are rural schools. The first school was connected on 28 September in the village of Novogurovsky in the Tula Region. The "last mile" for this remote region was covered using ADSL technology over a telephone line. The provider of this service, RTComm.ru will provide unlimited 24-hour 8 Meg access, to be paid for from the federal budget, which has allocated 3 billion roubles for the program. However RTComm does not own its own communications network to connect the entire country. While there is the potential to make connections in European Russia, a separate approach is needed to address the problem on the other side of the Urals.