That is to say, they were located in state institutions which paid for the computers and telephony charges, but the nodes themselves serviced the private needs of their operators. There are several possible reasons for this. Consequently, unlike Relcom ' s dependence on facilities available only at state institutions, Fidonet could exist anywhere there was a PC and modem. Second, Russia ' s Net is largely an off-line phenomenon. Consequently, the differences between the kinds of service available from Relcom and Fidonet are marginal.
Messages form Fidonet can be sent to the Internet and vice versa.
Third, language is another possible factor. The fact that the Internet is global makes it no less inaccessible for those who have no need or desire to learn English. The Russian Fidonet, from the outset, was entirely a Russian language phenomenon and remains to this day a linguistically bounded community. 58 Fidonet remains unadvertised, and there is no readily accessible public server providing the software and rules needed for Fido membership. An exhaustive search of the Russian press has only yielded three references to Fidonet over the past eight years.