This network has been bringing together a variety of noncommercial organizations of this city since 1994 to provide regional information exchange. Subscribers are made up from colleges and universities, scientific-research institutes, medical facilities, schools and other educational facilities, government facilities and various public organizations. They are given free access to the Internet with WWW capabilites and email. "The basic purpose of development of a Civil Network - granting huge information resources of the Internet for a greater number of noncommercial organizations, the activity of which serves to interests of a science, formation(training), culture, public health services, state management and other humane purposes."

This program, funded by Open Socieity Institute (OSI), is designed to "(a) provide 32 provincial universities in the Russian Federation with a fully equipped computing center and multi-media lab with complete access to the Internet (b) to administer content based program initiatives for the university and non-university communities". This highly informative site provides detailed information on this beneficial program, a list and map of the universities that are participating, press releases and last but not least, "Russia from Coast to Coast" which is the newsletter of the UIC.

Open from 10 am to 9 pm, 7 days a week, this cafe provides free public Internet access at approximately hour long intervals on 10 computers to any Moscow resident. A May 7, 1997 New York Times article describes this cafe and those who are using it.