In the Internet - on the passport. Public Wi-Fi in Russia will be tied to the portal of public services

According to the amendments to the law “On Information ...” and a number of other acts made in 2014, operators are obliged to identify the identity of each subscriber to public Wi-Fi access points. This is usually done by phone number. In principle, such identification is sufficient for identification. But the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media is faced with the task of popularizing the Unified Identification and Authorization System (ESIA), which is still far from 100% penetration. As of August 2017, only 55.5 million Russians are registered there.

The authorities want the maximum number of users to register on the public services portal. Therefore, a password for access to the Internet should be issued after authorization on the state portal. This recommendation was sent to the regions of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, Izvestia writes . The corresponding order is contained in the unpublished protocol of the subcommittee on the use of information technologies in the provision of public services to the government commission on IT.

This is a very competent move, it will certainly allow a significant increase in the number of registrations on the public services portal, since a considerable number of Russians use public Wi-Fi in cafes, restaurants, hotels and public transport.

For example, in Moscow, the authorities set the task to maximize the coverage of public Wi-Fi with a single authorization. In August 2017, the mayor of the city reported that over the summer, the number of Wi-Fi users in ground transportation and at bus stops increased 1.5 times: from 3 million people to 4.6 million.
')

In the capital, there are more than 600 public transport stops with free access to Wi-Fi. About 100 thousand sessions are carried out daily. Until the end of 2018, Wi-Fi will be installed in all metropolitan electric trains.

Already, some public Wi-Fi operators have introduced authorization through the public services portal. For example, in 2015, the MaximaTelecom company did this to identify users of Wi-Fi networks in the Moscow metro . Soon Wi-Fi will start working in the same way in the St. Petersburg metro.

It can be assumed that in the future more and more services will require authorization on the portal of public services. This applies to all types of Internet access, as well as authorization in instant messengers and social networks. Ideally, probably, accounts in all Internet services should be tied to the user passport data on the public services portal. That is, it turns out that the Russians will be able to go online only on their passport.