As can be seen from the original proposal, the project was process rather than goal oriented. Consequently, the role of Freedom Channel was to facilitate and moderate the Russian telecom policy debate rather than to come up with specific proposals. Executive Conclusions and Recommendations Development of the Russian telecommunications sector is impossible without substantial investment. The present level of such investment is clearly inadequate. That proportion may now decline further in light of the recent economic crisis.
Project financing is the obvious way to go.
The Transit Bridge concept is just such a project. The Transit Bridge concept packet switching technology, which treats voice as data, avoids the limitations of a traditional infrastructure project investment model. Under the latter, which implies major investments over the course of a number of years before the first profit is possible, the country, business and technology risks pile up and make the investment prohibitively risky. With the packet switching approach one can start carrying transit traffic virtually tomorrow, with additional investment of a few million dollars, using the immediately available profits to increase the throughput capacity of the national data networks. The next question, of course, is who will operate the Transit Bridge.