New Law Could Put Russian Internet Traffic Fully Under Domestic Control

The Russian Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications has come up with draft amendments to the law regulating Internet communication, which stipulate that the main elements of Internet infrastructure should be owned or administrated exclusively by Russian legal entities or the state.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the Vedomosti newspaper, citing its own sources, the new draft amendments to the law aim to ensure "the integrity, continuity, stability, sustainability and security of the Russian national segment" of the Internet. The proposed changes introduce the concept of so-called critical Internet infrastructure, a key element of which is traffic exchange points, which, if the updated legislation is approved, would be licensed to Russian legal entities only, the media outlet said.

Aside from the system of traffic exchange points, the other elements of the critical infrastructure are identified as national domain zones, the infrastructure for its services and the state information system which ensures the integrity, stability and security of the Russian part of the network. Only Russian legal entities established by the federal executive authority for communications would be permitted to become the administrator of a national domain zone — URLs ending in .ru and .рф — according to the draft amendments.

The draft amendments to the law were discussed on Thursday at a meeting convened by Deputy Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Alexei Sokolov, the newspaper noted.

The proposed amendments leave open the possibility that, in time, foreign entities could become co-owners of traffic exchange points, as long as they do not control more than 20 percent of the overall traffic.

Currently, the UK company RETN is one of the foreign owners of the Internet traffic exchange points in the country, controlling up to 40 percent of Russian Internet traffic.