Sota.r52.ru ("About cellular communication...", later "About cellular and mobile communication...") was a Nizhny Novgorod website about mobile phones and telecom operators, hosted on the domain of the Nizhny Novgorod portal R52.ru. It is known from web-archive snapshots taken between December 2001 and September 2006. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 16 December 2001[1], and the last is dated 18 September 2006, by which time only a two-line stub remained in the site's place[4]. The project began as a personal site: in December 2001 it won the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day competition in the "Personal (Author's) Site" category, and by the mid-2000s had grown into a themed section of a commercial portal. Its content was tied to the city and region: the site ran a news feed of Nizhny Novgorod operators — MTS-NN, Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz ("Nizhny Novgorod Cellular Communication"), and Bee Line GSM in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast[1][3] — and maintained a reference database of handset models.

A personal site: 2001

In the December 2001 snapshot the site was called "About cellular communication..." and was arranged as a reverse-chronological list of short notes, some of which the author signed "Sota.R52". At the top of the page stood a counter for the site's own database: "244 phones in the database"[1]. At the bottom was "© 2001 R52" and a contact address, sota@r52.ru[1].

Most of the entries were reports on additions to the manual library: over the week of 7 to 14 December 2001, manuals were added for the SIEMENS S45 and C45, ERICSSON R520S, MOTOROLA TIMEPORT 250, ALCATEL ONE TOUCH 311, 500 and 510, PHILIPS SAVVY VOGUE and NOKIA 6210, along with descriptions of Sagem phones[1]. (Source 2 clarifies the Siemens lineup: it also mentions the S42.) The author was equally candid about failures: manuals for the LG-500, NOKIA-7650 and MAXON EPSILON could not be found, and regarding the NOKIA-7650 and NOKIA-5210 he noted that they were "not even available on the official site"[1].

Alongside this ran news of local operators. On 13 December 2001 the site reported, citing NSS, on the opening of roaming in the Netherlands and Croatia and the expansion of roaming with Switzerland through a second partner, Surize[1]. On 11 December — that MTS-NN now had five tariff plans: "MOLODYOZHNY" (Youth), "RATSIONALNY" (Rational), "AKTIV-300", "DESYATKA" (Ten, billed in 10-second increments) and "PREZIDENT" (President); the same entry cited www.mts.ru/nn for a figure: as of 26 November 2001, Nizhny Novgorod had 10,000 MTS-NN subscribers[1].

On 14 December 2001 an entry appeared on the home page: "Thanks to you, my site won the `Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2001 competition` in the `Personal (Author's) Site` category" — this was how the author announced the win and thanked readers[1].

Part of the portal: 2003–2004

By August 2003 the site had grown from a feed into a themed section of the portal and changed its heading to "About cellular and mobile communication...". The menu included the sections "News", "Press releases", "Phones", "Codes", "Articles", "Operators", "Tariffs", "Logos", "Ringtones", "Programs", "Classifieds board", "Mobile humor", "Wap resources", "Links", "Mailing lists" and a link to "R52 Portal"[2]. The home page listed ringtones with file sizes noted — from 149 bytes to 1.3 KB — and logos sorted into series ("Series01", "Series04", "Series09", "Series11", "Series13", "Music", "NewYear", "Country", "Transport")[2][3]. The footer credit changed to "© Copyright 2003 R52.RU"; the information partner was named as the agency NTA-Privolzhye (nta-nn.ru))))))))))))))))))))))))))))", and the same footer read "R52 — regional partner"[2][3].

Alongside world news about 3G and Nokia, the feed kept a Nizhny Novgorod thread: from 15 July 2003 MegaFon introduced the "Priyom" (Reception) tariff plans for Nizhny Novgorod subscribers, and VolgaTelecom signed agreements with a number of Nizhny Novgorod enterprises for exclusive telecommunications service[2].

By September 2004 the menu had been restructured: "Press releases" and "Codes" were replaced by "Forum" and "Secrets", and "discuss" links along with an invitation to "Discuss the news on the forum" appeared under news items and articles[3]. By this time the news feed had become almost entirely local. On 22 July 2004, citing the press service of ZAO "NSS", it was reported that from 21 July Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz had opened "unlimited services" to subscribers of the SITY tariff — "All SMS free", "All calls at night free", "All incoming calls free on weekends"[3]. From 1 August 2004 the company "Nizhegorodsky Radiotelefon" (Nizhny Novgorod Radiotelephone) introduced the "Forum" tariff plans — free incoming calls from all directions, a direct city number and per-second billing of outgoing calls[3]. On 30 August 2004 the Bee Line GSM network in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast reached half a million subscribers; to mark this, those who topped up their account by 10 dollars in a single payment between 1 and 7 September were promised 500 seconds of local airtime[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The win at the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2001 is the only award recorded for the project in the surviving snapshots. In the results of that same competition's public vote in 2004, the site no longer appears in the list of participants[7].

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed in two sections at once — "Firms (Enterprises): Communications and Communication Equipment: Communication Equipment, Services and Other"[5] and "Projects: About Cellular Communication"[6] — with the description: "Phones, cellular operators, specifications, manuals, comparisons, tests, tariffs, news and much more"[6]. Next to the entry, the directory showed a reading from the regional counter Counter.nn.ru (the site was assigned number 2717): in the snapshot from 8 September 2002 — "Rating: 3604" (nearly ten times higher than any other site in the r52.ru domain appearing in the same listing)[5], and in the snapshot from 24 December 2002 — "Rating: 12"[6]. What lay behind these numbers — cumulative visits or visits over a short period — cannot be established from the surviving pages, so they can only be compared within a single snapshot. An analysis of the counter and its readings by year is in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating; the broader context of the era is in the article Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

How it closed

Between the snapshots of 1 September 2004 and 18 September 2006, the site disappeared. On the 2006 home page only two lines remained: "The site sota.r52.ru is under development" and "The site is under development"[4]. The web archive preserved no later substantive copies of the home page. At the time of this survey the domain sota.r52.ru does not respond, and the site's content — the database of phone manuals, ringtones, logos, and the chronicle of the Nizhny Novgorod cellular market of 2001–2004 — survives only in the archived copies listed in the sources. In the registry of closed Nizhny Novgorod sites, sota.r52.ru is listed as an address that no longer exists.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Communications and Communication Equipment" section, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Projects: About Cellular Communication" section, 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)