Sources in the telecom market told RBC that about 20 companies with communication channels from Russia to Europe have signed to stop their expansion.
The moratorium was signed, according to one of RBC’s sources, in one of the recent meetings with the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, dedicated to limiting VPNs. Participants in the meeting included MMTS-9 (MSK-IX), Transtelecom, MTS, VimpelCom (Beeline), T2 Mobile (T2) and Ufanet. The duration of the suspension was not announced to the operators.
One of the publication’s interlocutors explained that the traffic of operators’ VPN services is similar to foreign traffic. The logic of the Ministry of Digital Development, he says, is that the reserves of corridors designated for external traffic are limited and the natural growth of traffic will lead to their filling. “As a result, telecom operators themselves will try to fight VPNs whose traffic appears to be foreign to the network: either they will try to filter it, or they will increase the cost of accessing foreign services, that is, they will ‘install an economic filter’.”
In addition, the RBC source added that the authorities expect that the moratorium on the expansion of foreign communication channels will force those foreign services that want to continue operating in Russia to install their servers inside the country so that the speed of downloading content for their Russian users does not decrease.
According to another interlocutor from RBC, the Ministry of Digital Development held several meetings with telecom operators and providers, where it convinced them to coordinate with the Ministry in all capacity expansions of leading channels abroad. Market participants will also provide monthly reports on cross-border traffic.
Another source explained that the operators are now coordinating with Roskomnadzor to expand foreign communication channels. According to him, we are talking about additional approval, for which the Ministry of Digital Development will have to obtain appropriate powers through amendments to the law or government decree.
Representatives of the companies that, according to RBC sources, agreed to the moratorium did not respond to publication requests. It was also impossible to get a comment from the Ministry of Digital Development at the time the memo was published.
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The head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadiyev, said at the end of March that his ministry was tasked with limiting the use of VPNs in Russia. The newspaper Kommersant wrote on March 31 that Russian authorities threatened IT companies that they would deprive them of tax benefits and their employees deferral from the military if they allowed VPN traffic to pass through. In mid-April, the largest Russian services stopped opening their doors to users with a VPN.