By Bill Fick

Despite underdeveloped infrastructure, the Internet is readily accessible in Russia at relatively moderate cost. Here is some basic guidance in getting started, whether you are seeking to send an occasional e-mail from your home computer or establish a fully-fledged online presence for your company.

Access

To access the Internet from your computer, all you need is a modem, telephone line, and an account at a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), where you can typically obtain necessary software. Moscow’s crackling telephone lines are legendary, but with some effort you can usually make your modem work with minimal frustration, although you should be ready to re-dial occasionally after being knocked off line by background noise.

There are two basic levels of individual service:

Users who work with an "off-line" system have access to electronic mail services only. The user reads and prepares e-mail in a special editor program without a network connection. Another piece of software then dials up via modem to your ISP, sends and receives messages automatically, and hangs up. This type of connection is advantageous if your telephone lines are especially poor, because it minimizes connection time and will radial automatically until it succeeds. Users who work "on-line" have direct, live connections to an ISP and for the duration of their connection have access to the full range of Internet services, including electronic mail and the World Wide Web. Given Russia’s telephone infrastructure, it is difficult to achieve dial-up data speeds exceeding 14.4 kilobits per second, which is acceptable for most purposes but somewhat tedious when you are trying to use a Web site with heavy graphic content.

Moscow’s ISPs typically charge $10-$50 for registration, plus a flat monthly charge and metered on-line time. The going rate for PPP/SLIP dial-up Internet connections in Moscow is about $3-$5/hour.

A permanent connection

If Internet access is or will become important to your company, you will want to arrange permanent, dedicate access for your company’s office Local Area Network (LAN). Such higher-order connectivity will provide high-speed access to the Internet from every work station without the hassle of dialing-up every time an individual wants to connect. It also allows you to create your own Web site – an internationally visible corporate Internet presence.

Putting your company’s LAN on line requires the following elements:

1) server/router. This can range from an inexpensive PC running free software such as Linux (my own office Internet node is a $2500 PC which serves 25 workstations and WWW pages beautifully) to a fancy and complicated array of UNIX workstations and routers costing tens of thousands of dollars.

2) "last-mile" connection. You need to establish a permanent connection between your server and an ISP, which can be a daunting task in Moscow.

The simplest option is to maintain a dial-up modem connection ‘round-the-clock, but this is not ideal since the connection will be unstable and all of the workstations in your office will be sharing a low-speed (under 28.8 kbps) connection.

Alternatively, you can lease a dedicated phone line from the city telephone company for a few hundred dollars per quarter. If you are less than 5 kilometers from your ISP, with special short-range modems you can achieve good data speeds in excess of 64 kbps over such a line; if you are farther away, however, you will be limited by the same 28.8 kbps ceiling.

A more expensive option is to order a point-to-point 64 kbps digital connection from a company such as Golden Line, for about $1200/month.

A final option which can be explored in limited circumstances is a radio-modem connection, with which you can achieve speeds of up to 2 megabits per second and no ongoing costs after a $5,000-$10,000 investment in initial hardware.

3) Internet Service Provider. You need to choose a provider which can provide dedicated connectivity/routing at the data speed you desire. In Moscow, the cost of a 64 kilobit/second connection begins at about $600/month.

Points to Ponder

The Internet services Market in Russia is varied and growing rapidly. A number of ISPs have existed in Moscow since the early 1990s and continue to expand in size and array of services, while countless smaller providers and academically oriented networks have appeared in t last couple of years as well. In addition to their own locally-based services, several of these companies offer remote access to U.S. systems such as America On-line, although this tends to be expensive and sometimes cumbersome.

Outside Moscow, basic e-mail is available in nearly every city of consequence in Russia, while full Internet access is becoming increasingly common as well. The quality, level, and cost of service can vary widely from place to place, however.

Choosing the right provider to suit your needs depends on a number of variables. IN addition to simply weighing costs, services, and user support reputation when making a decision, some questions to consider include:

For individual connections:

Do I need a full slate of on-line Internet services, or is e-mail sufficient for me?

Does the ISP offer a variety of dial-up telephone prefixes? Can I get a decent connection from the concrete telephone prefix where I will be doing most of my net surfing?

If I need network access as I travel within Russia, how accessible is my network by local dial-up in other cities?

For corporate LAN connections:

Is the "last-mile" connection problem easier or cheaper to solve with a particular provider due to geographic or other coincidental factors? Some networks boast relatively uncongested channels to the West, while others have invested more heavily in connectivity among other ISPs within Russia and the former Soviet Union. What is more important to me: fast data speeds to Internet sites in the U.S. and Europe that I want to access, or fast data speeds from my potential customers on other networks inside Russia who want to reach my Web pages?