The Russian authorities have decided to postpone the introduction of an additional charge for VPN traffic above 15 GB per month. RBC and Kommersant report this, citing sources in the telecom market. Several interlocutors claim that such measures will be postponed until the State Duma elections scheduled for September of this year.
Shift in timing. Initially, as Forbes reported, the Ministry of Digital Development planned to introduce a fee for international traffic starting May 1. Later, RBC sources said that the deadline had been moved to June 1, as operators needed to prepare in advance for the launch of this measure and conduct testing. Kommersant writes that at the moment there is still no document setting out the timing for introducing the fee and the obligations of operators.
Technical side. As a Kommersant source said, operators still do not understand how it would be technically possible to comply with the Ministry of Digital Development's requirement, because many Russian websites and services use foreign IP addresses.
"Most likely, this will result in a technical impossibility to do it," the publication's source believes.
Representatives of the "big four" mobile operators, like the Ministry of Digital Development, declined to comment.
Context. Forbes reported at the end of March that the Ministry of Digital Development had proposed that mobile operators introduce a charge for using more than 15 GB of international traffic per month. Later, Vedomosti confirmed this information. German Klimenko, head of the Digital Economy Development Foundation, suggested that 1 GB of foreign traffic in Russia could cost $60.
In recent years, the Russian authorities have blocked more than a thousand VPN services. Since the beginning of the year, 469 means of bypassing blocks have been restricted in the country, while no such cases were recorded in March.
Starting April 15, major Russian companies, at the request of the Ministry of Digital Development, also began restricting access to their internet resources when VPN was enabled. According to experts at RKS Global, 30 of the most popular applications in Russia are now checking users' devices for VPN.
The publication Kod Durova reported that major VPN providers are expecting a large-scale crackdown by Russian infrastructure companies because of amendments to the Anti-Fraud 2.0 bill. Some companies are offering long-term subscriptions, but this may be an attempt to make money before being blocked.