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Stakeholders negatively assessed the consequences of law on Russian internet autonomy

The stakeholders – mostly the companies who would be main subjects of proposed law – negatively assessed the law on autonomy of Russian internet. According to the assessment the provisions of law don’t coincide with declared aim to ensure the stability of Russian internet and Russian internet resources. The stakeholders believe the provisions of law would cause overloading of operators’ communication networks, network failures and significant increase in costs, including budgetary costs.

The law would provide The Russian internet watchdog with detailed map of traffic exchange points and would be able to block channels, including cross-borders, to any particular resource through the providers. But the liability for such blocking or network failures, caused by blocking, would bear communication operators. The communication operators don’t want to bear financial liability to subscribers for network failures and, as consequence, the services of low quality, in lieu of Roskomnadzor.

The law would require communication operators to acquire and install new equipment. Such requirement would entail additional significant expenditures. Besides, the additional equipment would cause more overloading on the network infrastructure, which increases due to increasing of traffic. The law doesn’t provide constant modernisation of equipment, what means that fast obsolescence of equipment can became a critical factor hampering the national network infrastructure. The law creates critical vulnerability for Russian internet and network infrastructure.