nnov.cityline.ru was the site of the Nizhny Novgorod node of the internet provider "Cityline" (Ситилайн), a dial-up internet access provider. The home page was titled "Cityline — Nizhny Novgorod" and listed the local round-the-clock technical support phone numbers — 355-915 and 354-715 — and the modem pool numbers 19-99-19 and 19-97-97[1]. Services under this brand in the city were provided by CJSC "INFORIS" (Инфорис), part of the "Golden Telecom" group of companies[2]. The surviving snapshots of the home page span 2002—2004, and almost all of that record consists of documents about the provider's closure.

What the site looked like

The permanent menu consisted of seven items: "How to Connect", "Our Rates", "Card Activation", "Contacts", "FAQ", "Technical Support" and "VA-BANK"[1]. Most of the page was occupied by a feed of dated announcements linking to a "News Archive", with a service line at the bottom reading "about the company | contacts | our coordinates | site map" and the address webmaster@cityline.nnov.ru[1].

The content of the 2002 announcements was ordinary provider routine. As the home page reported, "due to preventive maintenance work at the node, brief connection interruptions are possible on May 25 between 10:00 and 12:00"[1]. At the same time the company confirmed that internet cards marked "Activate no later than December 2001" remained valid throughout all of 2002 — citing order No. 122 of November 21, 2001 — and extended the callback service on the "Home" and "Night" rate plans until July 1, 2002[1].

What the subscriber got

Access was sold via Cityline internet cards, which the user activated themselves; some rate plans came with a free-call service and were served by a separate modem pool[1]. Along with access, the subscriber received a mailbox of the form user@nnov.cityline.ru and space for a home page at www.nnov.cityline.ru/~username[2]. For legal entities there was a separate "Business" rate plan[2].

Merger into "ROL" and closure

In December 2002 the site announced a "ROL=KIS+Cityline" promotion, marking the merger of the Nizhny Novgorod telecommunications companies "Agentstvo Delovoy Svyazi" (Agency of Business Communications), "Inforis", "Kommercheskie Informatsionnye Seti" (Commercial Information Networks) and "TeleRoss-NN"[2]. Sales of Cityline cards stopped on December 20, 2002, and activation on December 31, 2002; cards were not activated or accepted for return after that date[2].

In February 2003, CJSC "Inforis" invited customers to re-register their contracts with LLC "Agentstvo Delovoy Svyazi" (Agency of Business Communications), which operated under the "ROL" brand: acceptance of advance payments stopped on February 10, contracts were considered terminated as of March 31, 2003, information was available by phone at (8312) 196-296, and customers were invited to sign a new contract at offices on Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, 2 (the "Harbin" store) and Sovetskaya Street, 12[2]. The "ROL" rates were listed there as well: "ROL Business" — 60 hours for a 30 USD equivalent subscription fee, "ROL Office" — 12 hours for 10 USD equivalent, "ROL Optimal" — 0.4 USD equivalent per hour around the clock[2].

The home page explained in detail how to carry over one's mail and personal site: forwarding of mail from the user@nnov.cityline.ru mailbox to a new address was set up via a script at ira-cgi.nnov.cityline.ru and worked until July 1, 2003, while the home page was to be moved to www.rol.ru, leaving an index.html file with a three-second redirect at the old location[2]. The outcome was placed in the header: as of June 1, 2003, CJSC "Inforis" was discontinuing service to all its customers[2]. By that time the technical support number on the site had changed to the multi-line 7777-62[2].

After that the site froze: the January 2, 2004 snapshot repeats the May 2003 text verbatim, including announcements about deadlines that had already expired[3]. This is also the last snapshot of the home page in our web-archive sample[3]; today the domain nnov.cityline.ru is not registered.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our census from the nn.ru directory's category listing. No votes for it were recorded in our data, and the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004 lists neither "Cityline" nor "Inforis"[4] — by the time of the voting, the Nizhny Novgorod "Cityline" brand had already been wound down[2]. The site remains a rare record of what the consolidation of local providers in the early 2000s looked like to a subscriber: more detail on what the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of that era looked like can be found via the Counter.nn.ru counter and the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)