Sota.r52.ru ("About cellular communications...", later "About cellular and mobile communications...") — a Nizhny Novgorod website about mobile phones and network operators, running under the domain of the Nizhny Novgorod portal R52.ru. Known from web archive snapshots dating from December 2001 to September 2006. The earliest preserved snapshot of the homepage is dated December 16, 2001[1], and the last is dated September 18, 2006, by which point only a two-line placeholder remained in place of the site[4]. The project began as a personal endeavor: in December 2001 it won the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet competition in the "Personal (Author's) Website" category, and by the mid-2000s had grown into a topical section of a commercial portal. The content was tied to the city and region: the site maintained a news feed covering Nizhny Novgorod operators — MTS-NN, Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz, and Bi Layn GSM in Nizhny Novgorod Region[1][3] — and compiled a reference database of handset models.

Author's site: 2001

In the December 2001 snapshot, the site is titled "About cellular communications..." and is structured as a reverse-chronological sequence 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 appeared "© 2001 R52" and the contact address sota@r52.ru[1].

The majority of entries consisted of reports on additions to the instruction manual library: in the week of December 7–14, 2001, guides 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, as well as descriptions of Sagem handsets[1]. (Source 2 specifies the Siemens model range further, also listing the S42.) The author was equally candid about failures: manuals for the LG-500, NOKIA-7650, and MAXON EPSILON could not be found, and of the NOKIA-7650 and NOKIA-5210 he noted that they were "absent even on the official website"[1].

Alongside these, local operator news appeared. On December 13, 2001, the site reported — citing NSS — the opening of roaming in the Netherlands and Croatia, and the expansion of roaming with Switzerland through a second partner, Surize[1]. On December 11, MTS-NN was reported to have five tariff plans: "MOLODEZHNY", "RATSIONALNY", "AKTIV-300", "DESYATKA" (billed in 10-second increments), and "PREZIDENT"; the same entry, citing www.mts.ru/nn, gave the figure of 10,000 MTS-NN subscribers in Nizhny Novgorod as of November 26, 2001[1].

On December 14, 2001, an entry appeared on the homepage reading: "Thanks to you, my site won the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet 2001 competition in the 'Personal (Author's) Website' category" — the author's announcement of the win and expression of thanks to readers[1].

As part of the portal: 2003–2004

By August 2003 the site had outgrown its news-feed format and become a topical section of the portal, renaming itself "About cellular and mobile communications...". The menu included sections for "News", "Press releases", "Phones", "Codes", "Articles", "Operators", "Tariffs", "Logos", "Ringtones", "Software", "Classifieds", "Mobile humor", "WAP resources", "Links", "Newsletters", and a "Portal R52" link[2]. The homepage featured ringtones listed with file sizes — ranging from 149 bytes to 1.3 KB — and logos organized into series ("Series01", "Series04", "Series09", "Series11", "Series13", "Music", "NewYear", "Country", "Transport")[2][3]. The footer credit changed to "© Copyright 2003 R52.RU"; the news agency NTA-Privolzhye (nta-nn.ru) was named as information partner, and the line "R52 — regional partner" also appeared there[2][3].

Alongside global news about 3G and Nokia, the feed maintained its Nizhny Novgorod thread: from July 15, 2003, MegaFon was introducing the "Priyom" tariff plans for Nizhny Novgorod subscribers, while VolgaTelecom had signed exclusive telecommunications service agreements with a number of Nizhny Novgorod enterprises[2].

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

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet

The win at the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet competition of 2001 is the only award recorded in the snapshots. In the public voting results of the same competition in 2004, the site no longer appears among the entries[7].

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed under two separate sections — "Companies (Enterprises): Communications and means of communication: Communication equipment, services, and other"[5] and "Projects: About cellular communications"[6] — with the description: "Phones, mobile operators, specifications, manuals, comparisons, tests, tariffs, news, and much more"[6]. Alongside the listing, the directory displayed the site's rating according to the regional counter Counter.nn.ru (the site had been assigned number 2717): in the September 8, 2002 snapshot — "Rating: 3604" (nearly ten times higher than any other site in the r52.ru domain appearing in the same summary)[5], and in the December 24, 2002 snapshot — "Rating: 12"[6].

Whether these figures represented cumulative visits or visits over a short period cannot be determined from the surviving pages, so comparisons are only meaningful within a single snapshot. An analysis of the counter and its snapshots by year can be found in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating; the broader context of the era is covered in the article on the Nizhny Novgorod Internet.

How it closed

Between the snapshots of September 1, 2004, and September 18, 2006, the site disappeared. In 2006, the homepage contained only two lines: "Сайт sota.r52.ru в разработке" and "The site is under development"[4]. No later substantive copies of the homepage were preserved by the web archive. At the time of investigation, the domain sota.r52.ru returns no response, and the site's content — the handset manual database, ringtones, logos, and the chronicle of the Nizhny Novgorod mobile market from 2001 to 2004 — survives only in the archived copies listed in the sources. In the register of closed Nizhny Novgorod websites, sota.r52.ru is recorded as an address that no longer exists.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Homepage, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Homepage, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Homepage, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Homepage, 2006 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Communications and means of communication" section, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Projects: About cellular communications" section, 2002 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)