March 15, 2013. By 2020, 85% of public places in Yekaterinburg will have a Wi Fi access point. 75% of users are expected to use their mobile devices to enter the web, and 91% of households are predicted to have an Internet connection by then, the city’s official web portal states.

What is more, the number of IT and communications specialists leaving local colleges is also expected to go up from 2,751 to 38,100 people by 2020, Chairman of Yekaterinburg Council’s IT & Communications Committee Mark Markov said at a recent meeting.

There are currently over 550 functional Wi Fi access points at Yekaterinburg’s public places, and 69.9% of households have an Internet connection. This is two times more than in 2006. The total length of fiber optic cables located within the city limits has increased from 2,782.5km in 2006 to 3,997km in 2012, while the external traffic volume has grown by nearly a hundred times, from 360 terabytes to 30,265 terabytes.