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The Federal Forum ICT Infrastructure of the 2018 FIFA WORLD CUP Russia™ held on March 30, 2017 offered an outlook on the issues related to the organization and roll-out of telecom and IT infrastructure for security, control, communication and broadcasting at 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup.  

The forum was endorsed by the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, local organizing committee for Russia 2018, Russian Football Union, Federal Communications Agency (Rossvyaz), National Association of TV and Radio Broadcasters (NAT), International Academy of Communications, Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC), Rostec State Corporation, National IT Center, Russian Sports Facilities Association. Forum Partner was MegaFon, Platinum Sponsor was Huawei, Bronze Sponsor – Ericsson, Session Sponsor – TeleCore. ICT Infrastructure of the 2018 FIFA WORLD CUP Russia™ was also supported by CROC Inc. and Solar Security. General Television Partner was Match TV.

Andrey Chernenko, Director of Strategic Projects Department at the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said in his keynote address to the audience that the regulator has put a lot of effort into the ICT infrastructure for the World Cup and issued a number of statutes and regulations. “We have to become Russia’s true “digital national team”, and we won’t be able to pull such a major event off unless we prepare an efficient communications infrastructure,” Chernenko emphasized.

Pavel Pogrebinskiy, Director of Information Technology and Infrastructure Department, Local Organizing Committee “Russia 2018”, announced that all project activities for the construction of temporary ICT infrastructure have been completed. “The Organizing committee of “Russia 2018” has no doubt that all main works will be completed within specified time,” he added.

FIFA’s CIO Dick Wiles pointed out that FIFA is not after innovative and state-of-the-art technologies for the ICT infrastructure of a World Cup, instead it needs high level industry-proven standards.  

“We are bold enough and not afraid of anything, but I have to admit we are facing some difficulties,” continued General Producer of Match TV Tina Kandelaki. According to her, the broadcasting rights issue around 2018 FIFA World Cup hasn’t been resolved yet. General Director of the National IT Center Konstantin Solodukhin, the regulator has a proved a list of 28 services for the World Cup. “No Russian service provider alone would be able to meet the strict requirements to FIFA infrastructure,” he mentioned. According to Solodukhin, system fail safety must reach 99.99%, and any breakdown can cost the National IT Center 50 million rubles.

“We already have a track record in such large-scale projects, so we are convinced that we will be able to put all ICT projects for the 2018 World Cup in place,” reassured MegaFon’s Head of Projects for Government and Corporate Customers Semyon Zakharov.

The first and second sessions of the forum were dedicated to control, security, communications and broadcasting solutions for 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2017 Confederations Cup. The first session featured speeches from: Pavel Tereschenko, Deputy General Director – Director of World Cup 2018 project, National IT Center (NCIT), Andrey Moiseev, Head of linguistic services, Organizing Committee “Russia-2018”, Dmitriy Aniskovich, Head of IT systems department, Organizing Committee “Russia-2018”,  Nikolay Anischenko, Head of Services for TV and radio broadcasters, Organizing Committee “Russia-2018”,  Pavel Vishnyakov, Solutions and Strategy Director of MegaFon account, Yury Kotikov, Senior consultant for business strategy and ConsumerLab, Ericsson Northern Europe and Central Asia, Sergey Belik, Deputy General Director for Development, Telecore. Speakers of the second session were: Alexey Chuvilin, Technical manager of Telecommunications department from CROC, Yulia Adrianova, Cisco’s Wireless Business Development manager, Alexander Permyakov, Assurance and Managed Services Sales Support Director, Huawei Russia, Dmitry Golovin, Head of Video Surveillance at IT Department of the Moscow Government, Vladimir Drukov, Director of Solar JSOC, Solar Security, Andrey Udalov, CTO of Match TV, and Dmitry Petrov, General Director of Comfortel.

The event concluded with a round table entitled Organization of FIFA World Cup 2018 Russia: First results of the roll-out of regional ICT infrastructure. The panelists included: Oleg Sokolov, Minister of Information Technologies and Communications of Mordovia, Sergey Kuchin, Minister of Information Technology, Communications and Media of Nizhny Novgorod Region, Sergey Chukin, Deputy Head of the Department of Information Technologies and Communications of Samara Region, Ivan Avdeychik, Chairman of IT and Communications Committee of Ekaterinburg City Administration.

Forum participants commended its high level and unparalleled business program.