Connectivity problems continue in Moscow: there is no mobile internet in the central areas of the city since March 6, and public Wi-Fi networks on the streets are not working. You can reply to messages in instant messengers or check the suddenly changed route in a subway car where Wi-Fi is running, train stations or cafes with their own networks. Bereg’s correspondent started his journey from Kazansky railway station and tried to follow the usual routes of Muscovites. Medusa publishes this Reportage completely.
Five passengers on a train that has just arrived at Kazansky Station stand at the entrance to Komsomolskaya metro station (it is located directly on the station platform). They all look blankly at their smartphones: Five minutes ago, when the train passed the Sokolniki district, social networks and instant messaging were working, but they stopped on the platform.
Letters to the editor are not sent, and it is also impossible to read about what is happening in the world.
Mobile Internet has not worked in many central areas of Moscow since March 6, and over the past six days, problems with access to communications have worsened. At the beginning of the lockdowns, resources from the “white list” were open at least on smartphones (on weekends, for example, “Gosuslugi”, the Russian Railways website and “VKontakte” were open). On March 12, nothing will open – neither with VPN nor without.
In the station building, everything is almost the same as on the platform: people with suitcases and suitcases in the waiting room look gloomily at their phone screens.
In the Bereg Correspondents chain cafe, payment by card can be made without any problems. “The app doesn’t work for us,” the waiter apologizes, explaining that visitors will not be able to get cashback for their purchases. He heard from his friends that at some points of the same chain in the city center, since the end of last week, payment can only be made in cash. But this did not affect the place where it works: the payment terminal here operates via wired Internet.
A tall blonde wearing a short jacket entered a café. She holds a shabby green bag in one hand, and with the other she tries to type something on her smartphone. Upon hearing a conversation about Internet problems, I asked:
– Oh, and you don’t have internet too?
-Since the end of last week, no one has been at the center. But the Wi-Fi network in the terminal should work, try connecting.
– Holy shit! I was at the airport half an hour ago, and there was internet.
To log into the network of the station that distributes Wi-Fi, you need to enter a phone number and make a call to the number provided. If the signal passes, the Internet will appear. The procedure takes less than a minute, and the smartphone successfully connects to the RZD network. But the signal is only enough for the waiting room and a small section of the platform – after the doors leading into the city, the network is lost.
Outside this region, users can access City DOM.RU Wi-Fi and Moscow_WiFi_Free. But when I try to connect to both, the smartphone gives an error.
People leaving the station building are lazily hailed by taxi drivers on duty nearby, each wearing a black-and-yellow badge around their neck.
— How far is it from Ryzhskaya?
“One and a half thousand,” one of the drivers answers after a little thought.
From Kazansky railway station to Rizhskaya less than five kilometers, about 10 minutes by car; One and a half thousand rubles for such a trip is an indecent amount. Perhaps, this is why many people arriving at the station do not use the services of taxi drivers: after checking the prices, they decide to go to public transport, and the same taxi drivers show them the way to the metro.
If you call a taxi through the application from the station building, where there is Wi-Fi, you can get to Rizhskaya two and a half times cheaper, even with the “Business” tariff. The cost of a flight in economy class is a little more than 300 rubles, and the waiting time for the car is 2 minutes.
The mobile Internet ban does not seem to have had any impact on the operation of the Moscow Metro: payment terminals at ticket offices and ticket machines are operating normally. Paying for travel directly with a bank card through the checker also works. It’s impossible to get mobile internet at the station, as it is in the city, but Wi-Fi works well in the carriages, even despite the morning rush hour.
Passengers who are afraid to connect to public networks for reasons of digital hygiene can use mobile Internet on the Circle Line only on the section from Prospekt Mira to Kievskaya and in the Paveletskaya area. On the blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line, the signal begins to fail at Arbatskaya and appears at Elektrozavodskaya.
Muscovites have a way to find out about the interruption of mobile communications without taking the phone out of their pocket – using streaming services, for example, Apple Music or Yandex.Music. If the tracks within these apps are not downloaded to the smartphone, the playlist will stop playing in the headphones once the user enters an area where there is no network. A maximum of one song is uploaded for future use.
Faced with the lack of music, Bereg reporter opened Avito in search of a player: Downloading all the audio tracks to a smartphone takes up a lot of memory. Owners of old equipment get ready for increased demand: prices for used iPod classic reach 20 thousand rubles. At the start of sales in 2009, the latest model of this line cost $ 249, or 7.7 thousand rubles at the exchange rate of the same year.
Many people still download songs to their smartphones: in central metro stations, where there is no connection, people with headphones tap rhythmically. The passenger sitting in the car next to Bereg’s reporter is freeing up her phone’s memory by deleting photos and songs from her playlist — perhaps in order to save only the essentials for later.
In the metro stations there is a picture from the late 2000s, when people, in order to be found, still called each other by phone, and did not write in instant messengers. Now there is no other way to know where to meet people you know. It seems that mobile network operators have begun to focus on mobile communications, rather than the Internet, as before, in their advertising campaigns. “Talk to your loved ones, even if you run out of money,” says the Beeline banner advertising unlimited calls to subscribers of the same operator.
– How long have you been standing here? – A curly, blond-haired young man of about twenty years old runs towards his friend.
– Yes, about ten minutes.
– Why didn’t you call? How did we miss each other?
The comrade shrugs his shoulders in response. Perhaps he was among those who were unlucky enough to have his mobile communications blocked.
In a Moscow cafe on March 12, a barista warned Bereg’s correspondent that it may not be possible to connect to the local Wi-Fi network if the cellular connection on the phone does not work: to obtain authorization, you need to receive a code that comes in an SMS. The reporter has a network, but another visitor to the café can’t wait for an SMS.
There are now a lot of people around cafes and fast food chains, both individually and in groups. By looking at a crowd of people using smartphones – sending text messages or talking via video calls – you can quickly understand if there is free Wi-Fi running nearby.
“Sorry, you don’t know how to find Mrozowski [переулок]? “Mosgaz over there,” a short woman in her 60s with a smartphone in her hands takes turns approaching people who pick up the network. They shake their heads guiltily. Cards don’t work without the Internet, and Muscovites can’t connect to Wi-Fi.
Although when you open Yandex Navigator, the notification “Works even without the Internet” is displayed, this is only half true. To use it without a network, the map in the app must be pre-loaded. The Bereg reporter did not do this – and the notice is displayed against the background of an empty coordinate grid.
On the morning of March 12, RBC published I mentionedRead the City bookstore chain buyers are approximately one and a half times more likely to purchase paper maps – in particular, atlases and guidebooks. But Pereg’s correspondent did not meet a single person holding a paper map in his hands all day.
In the supermarket, pharmacy and order collection point, communication problems did not create any problems: cashless payments were accepted everywhere. In the supermarket, I was able to use the bonus card (unlike the cafe at Kazansky railway station) – its number is displayed in the application, even if the phone is not connected to the network. We had to prepare in advance to receive orders at the pick-up point: save screenshots with barcodes and order numbers on our phone.
Yandex.Taxi has provided a way to bypass the ban – if the Internet connection is unstable or if there is no connection at all, the “Order by phone for cash” button will appear in the application. “Where can I take you?” – asks a female voice on the other end. The cost of a trip along a nine-kilometer route is about 800 rubles. They do not inform you immediately about the arrival of the car – you need to wait for an SMS, where the color, model and number of the car will be indicated, as well as the waiting time. Once the driver reaches the meeting point, the passenger receives a call from the robot asking him to exit. To cancel the order, you need to contact the operator again.
In an SMS, they wrote to Bereg’s correspondent that they would have to wait for the car for 10 minutes – longer than usual, but not critical. The driver really arrives on time. He is reluctant to talk about the difficulties caused by blocking the mobile Internet. He only noticed the problem the day before and was initially sure it only affected him. “Why is this, don’t you know? – asks correspondent Bereg. “And as you know, WhatsApp has not worked for a month now, is that the case with you too?”
Almost the entire route passes along the Garden Ring. On some sections of the route, mobile Internet is still making its way, for example, in the Sukharevskaya district – at the reception of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Oleg Tabakov Theater, where a large ribbon of St. George has been hanging since the spring of 2022, which has already faded in the sun, depicting the letter Z.
The taxi arrives at the clinic where Pereg’s correspondent was heading. He thanks the driver for the ride and grabs the door handle – but the door is locked. “And you pay? Do you have cash? – asks the driver in a threatening tone. Paying in cash in a taxi has not yet become a habit.
In recent years, the EMIAS system crashed in Russian clinics even without an Internet outage: doctors could not enter the date into the computer and write referrals for research, so Bereg’s correspondent decided to check how the lack of connectivity affected the clinics. But if the EMIAS system didn’t notice the outages, the doctors felt them just as well.
“I have it here [на телефоне] There is internet, but when I go out, it disappears. I don’t understand why that is,” complains one doctor to a Pereg reporter.
Patients waiting for appointments also discuss cell phone locks.
“Maybe it’s politics,” says an older blonde woman regretfully. – When will all this end?
– Yes, we have just started, and in other regions it has already been six months.
– Yes, they said that indefinitely. Well, as long as there’s no war!
“That’s the way it is,” Pereg’s correspondent objects, puzzled.
– If she had not been in Moscow!
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In the evening, an MTS representative calls a Bereg correspondent. The operator cheerfully says, “We’d like to offer you 50% off unlimited mobile internet. Promotion only through the end of the week!”