TASS, September 27. The Digital Economy program, on which the Yamalo-Nenets Region is working, will improve communication with hard-to-reach villages and will improve telecommunication at healthcare and educational institutions, the regional governor’s press service told TASS.
Presently, thousands of Yamal families, involved in deer farming in the tundra, can use only satellite telephones.
In summer, 2017, Russia adopted a national digital economy program, which now consists of five directions: legal regulation, cybersecurity, education and human resources, development of technology research competences, and information infrastructures.
"The region has been working on the local digital economy program <…> which includes construction of digital radio-relay communication lines to hard-to-reach and far-away settlements and high-speed access to the Internet at socially important facilities," the press service said.
The program’s main part would be to build fiber-optic lines first of all to the region’s district centers. "The line to the Krasnoselkup village is due to be ready in 2018, and the line to Tazovskiy will be made in 2019," the press service said. "Under the program, we shall also have a 5G data transmission network and Wi-Fi networks."
How fiber-optic lines came to Yamal
According to the Russian statistics authority, Rosstat, every house on Yamal has a high-speed access to the Internet. At the same time, the Rostelecom telecommunication company, which provides access to more than 90% of families in the region, says only recently most users had to use telephone lines, where downloading a video could take hours. In 2012, in Salekhard the tariff was 2,000 rubles ($30) a month for 0.5 Mbit/sec. The situation improved there, as in 2014 Rostelecom completed the Northern Optic Stream, and the so-called fiber optic came to the Arctic region.
"The Northern Optic Stream is a communication line of 3,500km from Yekaterinburg crossing Khanty-Mansiysk, Surgut, Noyabrsk, Novy Urengoi towards Salekhard. <…> It is a base for telecommunication infrastructures in three Urals regions: the Sverdlovsk Region, Yugra and Yamal," the company’s press service told TASS.
The line crosses rivers, roads, railway lines, and oil and gas pipelines. "The builders had to work in taiga, in peat bogs, in the Far North’s extreme conditions," Rostelecom said. "Working in the permafrost was especially complicated."
The regional authorities say the construction continued from 2010, as more and more cities were receiving access to the optic line. "The problem remained with the Labytnangi city, as the line was to cross the Ob River, but in 2016 already the Transtelecom Company made its fiber-optic line between Saida and Labytnangi," the governor’s press service added.
Communication amid the tundra
Though access to the Internet is spreading across Yamal, more than 5,500 traditional-life families remain cut off it. "Since those people are mostly in deer farming, they spend most time at areas outside settlements - dozens and hundreds kilometers away from "civilization," and the only means of communication for them is the satellite communication," the governor’s press service told TASS.
An incident in early August (2018) was connected directly with this problem: a 15 year-old girl was missing in the tundra, but as the family did not have satellite communication they managed to contact the police and emergency services only three days later. The regional authorities every year buy and give to the North’s indigenous people satellite telephones not to allow situations like that.
"We have chosen the Iridium-9575 Extreme model," the press service said. This telephone is dust-and moist-proof, it has a reliable battery, a programmable SOS button and a built-in GPS-receiver.
In 2018, the region bought 286 telephones. As per early 2018, the region’s more than 1,200 families still lacked means of communication.
Wildfire monitoring
In July, 2017, the region introduced an emergency regime due to spreading wildfires. The air temperatures were around plus 30 degrees. Most wildfires emerged in thunderstorms. More than 170,000 hectares were on fire.
Modern technologies can be quite helpful in wildfire seasons. Rostelecom has organized in the region four video monitoring stations.
"The monitoring system finds automatically a wildfire at an early stage, reports the location and affected area, sends immediately notifications to respective services and points to the nearest fire extinguishing forces and means," Rostelecom’s press service told TASS.
The region plans to install similar monitoring systems in another six districts.