Russian officials continue to try to block the ability to connect to the Internet without government control of traffic.
The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications has developed a bill on the introduction of penalties for connecting to satellite Internet bypassing Roskomnadzor's blocking points.
According to the document, which was published on Monday on the website of legal information, the use of "satellite communication networks under the jurisdiction of foreign states" will be punished with a fine of up to 20 thousand rubles for officials, up to 200 thousand rubles for individual entrepreneurs and up to a million rubles for legal entities …
Fines will be imposed on both users and Russian telecom operators if they use the connection bypassing the rules set by the government in February.
All traffic that comes from satellite devices of subscribers from Russia, including from foreign subscribers who are roaming on the territory of the country, must pass through the interface station of the Russian telecom operator - a ground station that acts as an intermediary between the satellite and the subscriber's device when receiving a signal from space.
This station should also be located on the territory of the Russian Federation. If earlier this rule applied only to operators of satellite mobile radio communications, that is, mobile, now to any.
In order not to let the American project of satellite communications OneWeb into Russia, which, according to the authors' idea, should cover the entire planet with high-speed Internet by 2027, a bill was introduced to the State Duma at the end of last year to ban the import of satellite communication terminals without a license.
Without waiting for the adoption of the bill, the State Commission on Radio Frequencies in January established a corresponding ban.
Promotional video:
OneWeb's global satellite Internet poses a threat to Russia's national security as it can be used for intelligence purposes, FSB spokesman Vladimir Sadovnikov told Reuters last year.
“Guarantees that the satellite communication system is not of an intelligence nature and will not be able to harm the interests of the individual and society of the Russian Federation are to a greater extent declarative and cannot be reliably verified by the Russian side,” he said.