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Russian government calculated approximate costs of internet autonomy

The experts in Russian government have assessed the recently proposed draft law on autonomy of Russian internet. And assessment underlines flaws of draft law, rather than its positive advantage. The draft law can impair the functioning of Russian internet, can make the authority of Russian internet watchdog – Roskomandzor – excessively broader and can entail high transaction costs for communication operators. The draft law also would not secure the stable functioning of Russian internet as it was initially declared by its authors.

The explanation note to the draft law states that implementation of the law would not require the state funds, but experts believes it is not so. The law would cause significant costs for the Russian state. The experts believe only set-up costs could be up to 25 billion Roubles, including the expenditures on research and simulation works, to create and maintain the points of traffic changing. The new law would also require involve new professionals, what also implies payrolls and new expanding structure of Roskomnadzor.

Communication operators would also bear the costs linked to the implementation of this law. These costs should be called compensation for network disruption; the risk that it can occur is very high the experts believe. The estimation of such risk can be assessed up to 10% of the market volume, what means 134 billion Roubles. The purpose of law is to protect the Russian segment of internet from external threats but, as the governmental experts believe, the goal-setting is not transparent. It is not clear what the threats are.

The expanding the Roskomnadzor’s authority partially contradicts to the current Russian law. The Russian Federal Security Service holds the authority to secure “eliminating the threats to the integrity, stability and security of Russian internet”. The draft law also provides requirements technically impossible to be implemented. For example, de facto the draft law requires the communication operators to provide the Roskomnadzor with the scheme of their network and traffic routing what is impossible because the network is live and constantly expanding and updating multilevel system.