Nine of Russia’s largest digital companies, VimpelCom, Gazprom-Media Holding, Kaspersky Lab, MegaFon, MTS, Mail.Ru Group, National Media Group, Rostelecom, and Yandex, have announced the creation of the Alliance for the Protection of Children in Digital Environments. On September 1, a national holiday in Russia known as the Day of Knowledge, the heads of the companies signed an agreement outlining their cooperation and voluntary commitments as the founding members of the Alliance. The signing ceremony was attended virtually by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
The main goal of the Alliance for the Protection of Children in Digital Environments is the creation of a child-friendly online environment based on creative and safe technology and digital solutions. This will allow for the balanced development of children by fulfilling their needs in relation to the digital world, teaching them how to behave responsibly online, and helping them form moral and ethical compasses.
The companies that make up the Alliance intend to increase digital literacy, conduct outreach campaigns, and create educational programs that teach about internet safety, digital hygiene, and online risks to children, parents, and teachers. The companies have agreed to generate creative content and popularize it among their target audience and create favorable conditions for the development of socialization, artistic talents, and safe interactions in the virtual environment for children.
Alliance members also intend to take a proactive approach in identifying and restricting children’s access to content that could be harmful to their health and development. That will entail removing illegal content and quickly responding to user complaints and other appeals linked to malicious content.
An important area of the Alliance’s work will be the establishment of dialogue between the government and international organizations surrounding the question of the protection of children in the digital world, as well as the development and realization of corresponding information technology solutions.
Working and consulting groups are to be established in order to realize the Alliance’s agreement. Within the framework of those groups, Alliance members intend to conduct further research and share the best practices they discover when it comes to the question of protecting children in the field of information and communication technologies.
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PJSC VimpelCom (Beeline brand) is a VEON company. VEON Ltd. is a global telecommunications provider that strives to be first in personal internet service providers. It currently serves over 212 million clients and expects that number to grow in the coming years. VEON Ltd. is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. VEON Ltd. shares are listed on the NASDAQ and Euronext Amsterdam.
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Gazprom-Media Holding has been shaping the media industry in Russia for over 20 years. Today, the company is involved in all sectors of the industry - television, film, production and distribution of content, the digital sphere, radio, press, and advertising sales. The company's mission is to create personalized content universes for its audience members based on their advanced media and technological expertise. That is why Gazprom-Media Holding builds its consumer strategy with the help of the highest quality of content across all media platforms.
Millions of Russians watch Gazprom-Media’s broadcast channels daily. Today, that includes 9 different channels: NTV, Match TV, Match! Strana, TNT, TV-3, Pyatnitsa!, Subbota, TNT4, and 2x2. Gazprom-Media’s TV channels show more than 27,400 hours of internally produced content annually. Gazprom-Media also has 32 special-interest channels, including 11 sports channels, 4 channels in the NTV family, and 17 more multi-genre channels produced by Red Media. Gazprom-Media also owns NTV-PLUS, a satellite and digital TV operator.
When it comes to the digital sphere, Gazprom-Media Holding is currently developing it’s own video service PREMIER, NTV-PLUS’s OTT-platform, the video platform Rutube, and other digital resources and services. In addition to that, Gazprom-Media manages Kvant, a company which works in the fields of advertising technology (AdTech) and digital advertising. To better serve their viewers, Gazprom-Media runs eight studios for creating quality content that is in high demand across all media environments. Gazprom-Media’s production assets include the KIT Film Studio, Comedy Club Production, Good Story Media, 1-2-3 Production, Nozhi Production Center, Studio Pyatnitsa, a complex for shooting sporting events and more. The film distribution market is covered by Central Partnership and White Nights.
Gazprom-Media’s portfolio also includes 11 radio brands: Autoradio, Radio Energy, Humor FM, Radio Romantika, Comedy Radio, Like FM, Relax FM, Detskoe Radio, Echo Moskvy, Radio Zenit, and 101.ru. When it comes to the print press industry Gazprom-Media continues to develop its two publishing houses, Sem Dney and Media Press, both of which have a digital presence.
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Kaspersky Lab is an international company which has been operating in the cyber security and digital privacy fields since 1997. Extensive expert knowledge and years of experience are the core of the company's next-generation security solutions and services which ensure the safety of businesses, critical infrastructure, government entities, and individual users. Kaspersky Lab’s comprehensive line of products includes cutting-edge endpoint security systems and an array of specialized solutions and services for fighting complex and ever evolving cyber threats. Kaspersky Lab technology is used to protect over 400 million individual users and 240,000 corporate clients worldwide.
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MegaFon is a nationwide digital opportunity provider that has been recognized as the fastest provider of mobile internet in Russia five times by the international company Ookla. MegaFon combines all IT and telecommunication areas, they provide mobile and landline services, mobile and broadband internet, digital TV and OTT video content, and innovative digital products and services. Over 72 million clients use MegaFon’s services in Russia.
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Mobile TeleSystems PJSC (MTS) is a leading Russian company in providing digital, media, and telecommunication services including mobile and landline services, internet access, cable and satellite TV broadcasts, digital services, mobile apps, financial and e-commerce services. MTS also provides convergent IT solutions relating to systems integration, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, data monitoring, data processing, and cloud computing. By providing innovative services and solutions to their customers, MTS makes a significant contribution to the economic growth in the countries where it operates and also serves to improve the quality of life for tens of millions of people.
In Russia, MTS has 78.6 million mobile service subscribers, 4 million households use their home internet access services, and 7.4 million subscribers, in over 200 cities throughout the Russian Federation, use their pay TV services.
MTS is developing a comprehensive system of projects aimed at providing quality education, various types of recreational activities, and entertainment and security for children.
Over 30 million children have already joined Generation M, MTS’s educational online platform, which is focused on the artistic development of younger generations. Generation M users have the opportunity to access educational content from Russia’s leading cultural organizations (the Tretyakov Gallery, arts universities and ensembles, film and animation studies, etc.) for free. The United Nations included the Generation M project in their list of examples of global good practices aimed at achieving five sustainable development goals at once, including reducing inequality.
In 2021, MTS launched a separate subscription service for children, NETARIFF Junior, that includes unlimited calls and messaging, books, music, cartoons, protection from unwanted calls and content, and many other features children need, like free subscriptions to online school books for all grades. For younger children, the company offers smart watches with optional parental controls.
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Mail.Ru Group LLC is developing their VK ecosystem which helps millions of people complete everyday tasks online. Their platforms are currently used by more than 90% of Russian internet users on a daily basis.
Their ecosystem can be used for messaging (on Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, through messenger services, and through Mail.ru email service), for selling and finding items and services, searching for work and employees (on Youla and VK Rabota), ordering groceries and delivery food (on Delivery Cub, Samokat, and Local Kitchen), finding taxis, car sharing vehicles, or electric scooters for getting around the city (using CityMobile and CityDrive), mastering a new profession (using GeekBrains, Skillbox, and other educational projects), buying items on Russian AliExpress, and completing a number of other tasks.
The separate parts of the ecosystem are connected internally. Users can log in to various services with a single account on VK Connect. It allows users to pay and earn cash back on the VK Pay platform, receive discounts and other offers with VK Combo, use their favorite services through the app platform VK Mini Apps, and the voice assistant Marusya is there to help manage tasks.
Mail.ru Group is also developing their ecosystem of products and services aimed at the digitalization of business processes. That includes everything from internet promotions and predictive analytics to corporate social networks, cloud services, and automating enterprises.
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National Media Group (NMG) is Russia’s largest private media holding company. NMG manages a diversified portfolio of assets in the areas of production, distribution, and the monetization of high quality information and entertainment content across all forms of media.
Among NMG’s key assets are the following leaders in Russia’s media market: the broadcast TV channels REN TV, Channel Five, STS, Domashniy, Che, STS Love, STS Kids; the multimedia information center MIC Izvestia (including the web portal IZ.RU, the Izvestia newspaper, and the news services of REN TV and Channel Five); and the newspapers Sports-Express and Delevoy Petersburg. NMG also owns a stake in Channel one.
NMG is a leader in pay TV services and it manages the broadcasting of the following international TV channels in Russia: Discovery, Eurosport, Warner Media, Viasat, Fox, National Geographic, and UFC (as part of Media-Telecom, a joint venture between NMG and Rostelecom).
NMG is the owner of NMG Studio which, along with Art Pictures Vision, Art Pictures Distribution, Vodorod, and the Industry School of Film and Television, allows NMG to maintain a complex presence in the cinema production and distribution market.
In 2019 NMG launched the online service More.TV.
In September of 2020, NMG became the operator for the online streaming service Netflix in Russia.
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Rostelecom is Russia’s largest integrated provider of digital services and solutions which is present in all market segments and covers millions of households and public and private organizations.
The company is the leader in the high-speed internet access and pay TV services markets. Rostelecom’s broadband user numbers exceed 13.5 million, it has 10.8 million subscribers to it’s pay TV service, and of those subscribers, over 6.3 million use IPTV. Tele2 Russia, a subsidiary of Rostelecom, is a major player in the mobile communications market. Jointly with Rostelecom, Tele2 Russia serves over 46.6 million subscribers and maintains an excellent Net Promoter Score (NPS) which measures the willingness of users to recommend a company to others.
Rostelecom is the market leader in telecommunication services for Russian government authorities and for corporate users at all levels.
The company is widely recognized as a technology leader in innovative solutions in the fields of e-government, cyber security, data centers, cloud computing, biometrics, healthcare, education, and housing and utility services.
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Yandex LLC is a leading Russian technology company that creates innovative products and services based on machine learning technology and artificial neural networks. The company includes more than 85 different user services.
The company’s main business areas are search and portal services, e-commerce, advertising, media services, online taxi and food ordering, and self driving cars. Yandex also has products aimed at advertisers and business owners.