On July 18, 2012, the Federation Council approved a package of laws that form in Russia a list of sites prohibited for children. The introduction of a blacklist may require additional investments from Russian operators, which will affect the cost of Internet access services.
The register of sites prohibited for children will start functioning on November 1, 2012. Consequently, providers and hosters undertake the obligation to block access to resources blacklisted by the executive authorities. Nikolai Nikiforov, Minister of Communications and Mass Media, noted that many providers "do not have a sufficient set of technical equipment to restrict access to a specific page of a specific system," and, therefore, this will become a matter of new investments.
The registry will contain page addresses and network IP addresses. The discontent of Internet companies and mobile operators was caused by the fact that, along with illegal content, pages that are completely safe can get from the black list.
In addition to IP blocking, the more expensive blocking of a specific URL will also apply.
Denis Rychka, a representative of Akado, suggests using traffic management systems. The system does not block the entire site, but a specific page, analyzing IP addresses and URL names when routing. This method will also require additional costs from providers. At the same time, prices for filtering vary from 3 million rubles for the entry-level to $ 50 million for a federal-scale URL filtering system.
Disputes over tariff increases have not shown concrete results. The representative of the Megafon network, Yulia Dorokhina, believes that the new law should not affect either the speed or the cost, the representative of VimpelCom (Beeline) Anna Aibasheva noted that the operator is waiting for the final regulatory documents governing the creation of blacklists, the representative “Rostelecom”did not give specific answers on the merits of the questions.
The tariff change is expected to affect smaller providers. Large operators will also have to spend money, but in the scale of their business, this will be an imperceptible investment.
