Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development plans to tighten the conditions for issuing licenses to telecom operators. Izvestia reported this, citing sources.
In particular, the ministry proposes:
introducing three types of licenses costing from 1 million to 50 million rubles depending on the category;
setting a minimum charter capital for telecom companies from 5 million to 100 million rubles depending on the license type;
refusing to issue telecom licenses to sole proprietors;
not granting licenses to companies that do not connect to the System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM);
revoking licenses without a court decision for a repeated serious violation of the conditions. At the same time, the company’s beneficiaries would be unable to obtain a new license for ten years.
As Izvestia notes, in this way the Russian authorities intend to “remove from the market” some small city- and district-level telecom operators. According to one of the newspaper’s sources, these are still only preliminary proposals, and no final decision has yet been made.
The Ministry of Digital Development said that changing the licensing terms would result in services on the telecom market being provided by “only reliable telecom operators.”
Experts believe such measures could reduce competition in the market and ultimately lead to higher tariffs for home internet and digital television.