Internet and Online Media
Marina Sokolova

Summary

By 2010, the number of Belarusian Internet users was equivalent to around 40% of the population. In spite of its stable infrastructure development, Belarus was second to last among Central and Eastern European countries in terms of “Internet penetration” (the percentage of users with regard to the entire population), and last in broadband access development. As previously, professional journalism websites and multi-purpose horizontal portals ranked among the most popular online media.

Moreover, 2010 saw the intensification of a process that began in 2007 – increasingly active use of various social media (particularly social networks and the blogosphere). One noticeable trend was a convergence of online and offline media.

The implementation of legislative amendments governing Internet regulation clearly showed a lack of competent specialists and the ineffectiveness of state-monopolized decision-making on Internet management. These factors were the motive behind a dialogue between state officials and private businesses. Although the government’s new legislation and norms did arouse public interest in Internet management issues, the state’s and the public’s points of view differed greatly concerning almost all aspects of Internet management.

In 2010, the Belarusian government took steps to introduce a range of Internet surveillance and censorship measures. Of serious concern were violations of Internet users’ rights perpetrated by state bodies.

Trends:

• Belarus is continuing to lag behind most countries in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of its Internet development and user numbers.
• Internet access costs are decreasing.
• There is still a “geographical” inequality in Internet penetration between Minsk and other regions of the country.
• Social media use is growing dynamically, especially youtube.com, twitter.com, livejournal.com, wikipedia.org and facebook.com.
• State bodies have been compelled to keep up a dialogue with the business community and civil society on Internet regulation issues. However, this dialogue has only exposed the state bodies’ and the public’s differing points of view on almost all aspects of Internet management. It has not halted the introduction of a range of Internet surveillance and censorship measures, or violations of Internet users’ rights perpetrated by state bodies.

Infrastructure

According to Ministry of Communications and Computerization figures, in five years (2005–2010), the bandwidth of the Internet’s outer channel increased over 100 times, up to 90 Gbit/s (70 Gbit/s towards Russia [partners – Sinterra, Eurotel, TransTeleCom and Rostelecom] and 20 Gbit/s towards the West [Lattelecom-Apollo]).1 The broadband access capacity for data transfer networks went up from 3000 to 1.5 million ports.

The Belarusian outer channel is operated by a state company, Beltelecom. On January 1, 2011, the total capacity for data transfer networks had reached 1.841 million ports, most of which (1.173 million) belong to the national operator Beltelecom.2 The number of broadband Internet subscribers and users was 1.8 million (approximately 50% of all Internet users, or 9% of the population).3

As a rule, the cost of broadband access via DSL and cable depends on the amount of traffic, which is reflected in state telecommunications monopolist Beltelecom’s price structuring. In 2010, speeds doubled for byfly/Beltelecom’s unlimited access subscribers (and later for users of other Belarusian providers).4 Nevertheless, Belarus came last among Central and Eastern European countries in terms of its broadband access penetration (9%).5

Secondary wireless broadband Internet providers became legal in 2009. There are currently over 500 hot-spots, almost half of which are in Minsk and the Minsk region.6 There are also 1262 collective Internet access points provided by state-owned Beltelecom.

The Internet’s audience

Since 2006, the trend has been for the Internet’s audience to increase steadily by 3000–4000 people per year (Fig. 1). In December 2010, the number of Internet users in Belarus was 3.448 million, yet according to Internet penetration figures (the percentage of users with regard to the entire population), Belarus was still second to last among Central and Eastern European countries (the Ukraine being last).7

Fig. 1. Internet user growth in Belarus, 1995–2010, x million people 8

The major split in terms of access was not between rural and urban populations (about 74% of Belarusians live in cities)9 , but between Minsk and the regions. In Minsk, there were 44 computers per 100 families, but only 25-26 in the regions.11 Additionally, diminishing costs for Internet access might lead to a reduction in Minsk’s dominance, and an increase in users from the regions.12

Online and social media

As before, professional journalism websites and multi-purpose horizontal portals ranked among the most popular online media in 2010.13 In the lead were the portals tut.by and mail.ru (Table 1). Although it is common for horizontal portals to be well-established throughout the entire Central and Eastern European media landscape, news sites are unusually popular in Belarus, as compared to its neighboring countries. This is a consequence of the lack of free, unbiased offline sources.14

Table 1
Rating of online media 15

The Top 10 for time spent visiting websites includes the news sites charter97.org (in 8th place), belaruspartizan.org (9th), the file-sharing service torrents.by (2nd), the horizontal portals mail.ru (1st) and tut.by18 , the vertical portals onliner.by (6th), football.by (10th), loveplanet.ru (3rd), the sng.by community (7th), semeistvo.by (4th), and the forum platform borda.ru (5th)19 . The most active readers of online news are Minsk residents, who make up 40% of the audience of news sites, and account for 45% of all views.20

One of the most noticeable trends in 2010 was a convergence of online and offline media. Educational courses in web-journalism are now offered by state institutions (the Belarusian State University’s journalism institute, Minsk), as well as independent organizations (the Belarusian Association of Journalists). The portal belsmi.by was launched in early 2011 to provide a single access point for state media online, and offers the following news and material: an electronic catalogue of Belarusian state media, digests of articles from the national and regional state press, and journalists’ blogs.

Naturally, the modern online media landscape has undergone serious changes since the appearance of various social media and their increase in popularity. This trend was evident in 2010, and in Belarus21 , the social network vkontakte.ru, youtube.com video hosting, and blog platform livejournal.com entered alexa.com’s Top 10, along with browsers, e-mail, and the major portals.22 The dynamics of these sites’ growth in popularity in 2009–2010 (according to Google Trends) can be seen in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The dynamics of social media popularity growth (youtube.com; twitter.com; livejournal.com; wikipedia.org) in Belarus 23

Social networks, blogs, microblogs, wiki, social bookmarking, photo, video and music hosting, and file-sharing services are the social media on which the Belarusian Internet audience is most active. Social network vkontakte.ru has been the leading social media since 2007, usually followed by another Russian site, odnoklassniki.ru. In 2010, the online media landscape was dominated by the global facebook.com network, and the Russian network my.mail.ru24 (Table 2).

Table 2
Top 10 most popular social media websites in Belarus (of the Top 100 websites)

Source: alexa.com 25

Unfortunately, due to a shortage of comparable statistics on users of Belarusian social network sites (i.tut.by, vseti.by, face.by, parta.by, svyzi.ru, vsevmeste.by and belarusy.by), it is hard to assess their development or user activity. The data we do have allows an approximate comparative assessment of Belarusians’ increased use of the vkontakte.ru, vseti.bу and facebook.com networks (Fig. 3). The file-sharing sites rapidshare.com, depositfiles.com, torrents.ru, letitbit.net, and Belarusian file-sharing sites freespace.by and torrents.by are all in the Top 20 of the Belarusian rankings.26

Fig. 3. Dynamics of the number of Belarusian users on the social networks Vkontakte.ru, vSeti.bу, Facebook.com, December 2010 – January 2011

Source: estimated data 27

Belarusian Internet users definitely visit social bookmarking sites (delicious.com, digg.com, stumbleupon.com, etc.), geosocial sites (foursquare.com, gowalla.com, altergeo.ru), photo and video hosting (flickr.com, sevenload.com, viddler.com, vimeo.com, dailymotion.com, metacafe.com, etc.) and social navigation sites (trapster.com, waze.com, etc.), but the amount of users is too small to figure in the global profiles of Google Trends.28 Very little Belarusian Internet user activity has been recorded on social news sites (nowpublic.com, reddit.com, world-news.newsvine.com, etc.).29

Internet Regulation

Since 2010, the functions of the state ICT regulator have been taken over by the Belarusian presidential News and Analysis Centre (NAC), which now has two rather incompatible functions – to guarantee Internet security (especially the security of state information systems and sites), and to “independently regulate” ICT development.30 Decree № 515 “On several measures to develop the Belarusian data transfer network” (30.10.2010) also provides for the creation of a unified national data transfer network to link up “civilian” data transfer networks in the country (this will go into operation on January 1, 2012).

A “National Traffic Exchange Centre” (registered on 15.11.2010) will open at the end of 2011.31 One of its functions will be to issue permits for relaying international Internet traffic and connecting to e-networks in foreign countries.32 The technical administration of the .BY domain is performed by the Belarusian presidential NAC and Reliable Programs (the .BY domain’s technical administrators since September 2010).33

In 2010, several acts were passed in accordance with a Belarusian presidential decree “On measures to improve use of the national segment of the Internet network” (01.02.2010).34 The process of devising and implementing legislative amendments governing Internet regulation clearly showed a lack of competent specialists, and the ineffectiveness of state-monopolized decision-making on Internet management. These factors were the motive behind a dialogue between state officials and private businesses.

Also in 2010, an interdepartmental consultative council was created to examine issues of developing the national segment of the Internet. This council includes state management representatives (from the Belarusian presidential NAC and the Ministry of Information), state and commercial organizations working with information technology, and the IT-lobbying association Belinfokom. It is chaired by the head of the Belarusian presidential NAC. The council met twice in 2010, with representatives of Internet access providers and mobile networks also present.35

Belarusian society began to focus on Internet management issues on a global, regional and national level in 2010. On May 18, the research group e-belarus.org and the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS)’s agency for policy expertise organized a discussion entitled Internet Management: European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) and Belarus. On September 20, a round-table discussion on Internet management issues was organized by the Delegation of the European Union to Belarus and the Belarusian Academy of Science’s institute of philosophy. Taking part were representatives from the government, business circles, the academic community, and civil society.

On October 25, 2010, a discussion on Belarusian Internet: Problems and Development Prospects was held between the OSCE Representative on Media Freedom, the Ministry of Information, and the Belarusian presidential NAC. At this discussion, the “analysis of the recent provisions regulating the Internet in Belarus”, prepared by A. Rikhter36 , concluded that “the merits of Decree № 60 and acts passed subsequently are rather desultory, and have shortcomings which limit the freedom of expression and media freedom on the Internet”.37 The OSCE put forward a number of recommendations which would bring Belarusian Internet management legislation into line with the national constitution, as well as international legislation signed by Belarus. Generally, however, the discussion exposed the state bodies’ and the public’s differing points of view on almost all issues.38

Content-monitoring and violations of Internet users’ rights

In 2010, the government took steps to introduce a range of Internet surveillance and censorship measures. Decree № 60 and related legislation directly postulated the need for monitoring and filtering of the Internet. In June 2010, the Ministry of Communications and the Belarusian presidential NAC issued a resolution requiring the creation of two lists of sites to be blocked.

On October 25, the Belarusian authorities confirmed they had begun filtering in order to restrict access to undesirable content, and were in possession of a list of sites to be blocked. One list is public, and currently contains no sites at all, while the other is a limited-access list for Internet service providers only.39 According to the Belarusian state electronic communications inspectorate (BelGIE), that list contains about 20 sites which are as yet undisclosed.40

Of serious concern were violations of Internet users’ rights perpetrated by Belarusian state bodies. For example, on December 19-20, 2010, Belarusian Internet users faced the following obstacles: fake websites, DDoS attacks, traffic shaping, and blocking of HTTPS 443 sites. At least five sites suffered DDoS attacks (charter97.org, belaruspartizan.org, udf.by, zapraudu.info, nekliaev.org). On the election day, December 19, Internet users were unable to access Google, Twitter and Fаcebook due to the blocking of HTTPS 443 sites.41

Conclusion

We should expect the aforementioned trends to continue in future. Of course, the number of Internet users in Belarus will continue to grow, and the Internet penetration discrepancy between Minsk and the regions should become gradually less apparent over time.

State bodies will uphold their policy to extend Internet penetration and modernize the IT sector, but will also continue their policy of increased Internet-monitoring, and will introduce Internet censorship, which will inevitably lead to violations of users’ rights to access information. In Belarus, due to its closed information space, the popularity of news portals will continue to be high, which is unusual for the region, but we should also expect rising numbers of Belarusian Internet users on social networks.