Russia's telecommunications agency has ordered seven cargo planes' worth of video equipment in a bid to make March's presidential elections more transparent.

Each plane will contain 22,000 notebook computers made in Taiwan and Shanghai, as the amount of equipment required proved too much for Russian companies to produce in time. The $1 billion project is unprecedented, according to deputy head of the telecommunications agency Ilya Massukh, and will be paid off in five to seven years.

After the equipment arrives, two Russian companies will install live-streaming webcams at polling stations across the country. The new system will be tested on 60 per cent of all polling stations starting in late February.

Each station will have two cameras – one aimed at the ballot box and one showing a general view of the polling station. The broadcast will start at 9pm Moscow time, and 25 million users are expected to have access to the system simultaneously, with 60,000 people per camera. In total, 246.5 years of video will be recorded on election day; YouTube users upload only four years of video daily.

The idea to equip each polling station with constantly-streaming webcams was suggested by PM Vladimir Putin in response to allegations that November's parliamentary election results were fraudulent. The move, Putin believes, would make elections transparent.

Meanwhile, IT specialists say the extra election monitoring could not only cost Russia a fortune, but crash Internet providers around the country.

For Russia’s 94,000 polling stations, no less than 300,000 web cameras would be in place, in addition to powerful server stations and Internet links. Such demands require Internet capacities Russia simply does not have.