The manufacturer of Russian Standard vodka has bought the domain names vodka.ru and vodka.com. Experts estimate that the former could carry a price tag of $10,000. Meanwhile, sources of Webplanet claim that several months ago this domain name was offered for sale by its previous owner, the famous Russian designer Artemy Lebedev, for as much as $70,000. The price of vodka.com, which Russian Standard bought from Nett Corp., should have been at least $1 million. According to sources of Reuters, it was $3 million. The domain names will be used primarily to promote the Russian Standard vodka brand on the web.

The Moscow-based broadband Internet access provider Corbina Telecom has failed in its attempt to sign up 180,000 new broadband subscribers by year's end despite a spate of promotional events the likes of the Miss Breasts contest. Last year the ISP also tried to gain publicity through scandal by posting a homophobic promo flick on its website. This year Corbina fell short of its target by 60,000 subscribers. During the year the company added 102,000 new subscribers, but most of them, some 55,000, signed up during the last four months of 2006. The company also failed to connect the planned number of buildings. Out of the originally planned 27,000, the company managed to get only 20,000 buildings online. Despite this setback, the ISP has not abandoned its ambitious expansion plans. Next year Corbina plans to build a network of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout Moscow and start deploying broadband access networks in other major European cities of Russia and possibly in Moscow oblast.

A Yoshkar-Ola court has jailed two Muscovites for attempted insurance fraud involving a plot to kill a person. One of the accomplices took out a EUR 1 million insurance policy, after which they hired a student from the Republic of Mari-El to work as a system administrator in Moscow. The criminals plotted to kill and burn the system administrator in a staged car accident and pass his corpse off as the body of the insured accomplice. Yet the student was lucky to survive, exposing the criminals. The foiled scam resulted in jail sentences of 13 and 12 years for the two accomplices and 150,000 rubles in moral damages to be paid to the victim.

The Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge at the Higher School of Economics has estimated that 21 percent of the Russian population use the Internet, which represents a threefold increase from 2003. However, the number of active users has grown on a more moderate scale. They currently represent 13 percent of the population versus 9 percent in 2003. At the same time, 57 percent of Russians say they have no use for the Internet, while 2 percent have expressed hostility toward the web. The reasons behind such indifference are rather banal: some think the web is cluttered with spam and pornography, while for others it is impossible to get connected. There is also a shortage of practically useful services.

Among top 20 Russian stores that lead in online sales are 13 websites which are storefronts of actual offline stores. Their prices are higher than those of full-time online stores, but this does not discourage buyers who are willing to pay a jacked up price for a familiar brand. The retail trade turnover in the Russian segment of the Internet totaled $1.02 billion in 2005 as compared to the national retail turnover of $243 billion that year. This places Russia on a par with the US in terms of the ratio between the volumes of online and in-store sales. The only thing clouding this accomplishment is the fact that Russians mostly order items online and pay for them in cash upon courier delivery. Notably, market participants have offered sharply differing estimates of the market size. While Ozon.ru representatives peg the market at $600 million, Softkey.ru estimates it at $2.6 billion.

Anton Nosik, one of the Sup execs, predicted in his interview with Esquire magazine that by 2010 Russia will have 40 million Internet users, while the total number of Russian-speaking web surfers will be 70 to 80 million. Most of the growth should come from users in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Nosik also predicted an impending demise of ICQ and iTunes in the Russian market. Russian-speaking users are now migrating to Gtalk, which supports the open Jabber standard and a multitude of clients. It also stores the message history on a centralized server. As for iTunes, its future is threatened by a more flexible demand management rather than continuing high prices for recordings. Nosik thinks that the Chinese model of Internet censorship is no threat to Russians, since back in 1999 Russia's President Vladimir Putin scrapped a bill that, if signed into law, would introduce mandatory licensing of new Internet media with the Ministry of the Press, while those already existing in the .RU zone would be expropriated and used at the ministry's discretion.

As part of the Big World federal project, the local authorities in Cherepovets, Volgograd oblast, have established an information center that should help prevent HIV infection. The center will assist young people who want to learn about ways to avoid HIV, the authorities believe. Counseling will be available both via telephone and through specialized websites. It is believed, however, that apart from having the potential to raise HIV awareness the Internet also raises the risk of infection. The website Gayrussia.ru cites AIDS Foundation data which imply that the recent increase in the spread of HIV infection may be due to the widespread practice of using online dating services, particularly for casual sex.

Federal Antimonopoly Service has notified Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of its dissatisfaction with the preferential treatment enjoyed by the cable operator Mostelecom owing to a recent directive by the city's authorities. With their October 17 directive the city fathers have obligated municipal services to assist Mostelecom in the process of development of its broadband access network. This operator is allowed to seek out and report unsanctioned or substandard networks of other operators, which creates conditions for unfair competition.

Summa Telecom will invest $50 million in an undersea cable to connect Russia's Sakhalin with Japan. The communication line will connect mainland Russia, Sakhalin and Japan. The company Transtelecom is also laying a cable connection with Sakhalin and has already prepared the necessary land infrastructure for the communication channel. All communication between Sakhalin and mainland Russia presently takes place via satellite, ever since the old cable of Rostelecom and Dalsviaz became unserviceable. Some analysts express amazement over the plans of Summa Telecom, saying that it is irrational to go ahead with laying the cable without first preparing the land infrastructure. At the same time, Summa Telecom does not have networks on Sakhalin proper. There is also uncertainty concerning the cable link with Japan, as prior intergovernmental agreements are needed to lay it.

Despite competition from ISPs that connect users to the Internet via Ethernet networks, ADSL will still remain popular in Russia for a long time, Russian market players believe. Yet estimates of the period of sustained demand for ADSL vary from 3 to 5 years. ADSL providers themselves are more optimistic, believing that most subscribers do not need the speed of Ethernet connections, while the low speed of outgoing data from the subscriber is often higher than the data transfer restrictions set by the receiving server. Analysts also hold out hopes for the wireless access market, but it could be years before wireless services reach end users. At the same time, mobile internet access will account for a mere 6 percent of broadband connections in Russia.