The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Mubadala Investment Company (Mubadala), the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, announce a successful exit from their joint investment in the project to eliminate “digital inequality” in Russia’s regions, the RDIF’s website reports.
The project is being implemented in partnership with Rostelecom since the end of 2014. RDIF and Mubadala are now exiting from the project as it reaches the end of its investment period.
By the end of 2019, over the project’s 5 years, 11.1K access points providing free broadband Internet were commissioned in 83 regions across Russia, and to do so over 85K km of fiber-optic communication lines were successfully laid. The project has already resulted in significant positive effects for the lives of over 3.2 mio people in those regions. The project is being implemented in accordance with the instructions of the Russian President and the Federal Law “On Communications” to provide Russia’s rural settlements (those with a population of 250-500 people) with modern communication services.
Over the past three years, the total Internet traffic and the number of Internet sessions under the project has been increasing more than two times annually. By the end of 2019, more than 66.7 mio Internet sessions were recorded, the data traffic amounted to 11 TB.