MegaFon’s expenses for implementing the “law” of Yarovoi over five years can reach 40 billion rubles

In the budget for 2018, the federal telecom operator Megafon provided for the costs of fulfilling the requirements of the “Spring Law”. It is not known exactly how much the pledged funds are, information is a commercial secret. But at the beginning of this month, the operator’s general director, Sergey Soldatenkov, estimated the operator’s expenses for implementing the “Spring law” at 35–40 billion rubles, Vedomosti reports.

A source close to Megafon reported that this amount will be spent evenly over five years. Thus, about 7-8 billion rubles a year will go away. According to experts, this is quite real data, which is included in the MegaFon budget. It should be noted that the capital expenditures of MegaFon for 2017 amount to about 55-60 billion rubles.

The budget, which is adopted by the operator for 2018, must be approved by the board of directors in January - so far it has only been subject to prior approval.
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The antiterrorist amendments of Irina Yarovaya and Viktor Ozerov, adopted last summer, oblige telecom operators and Internet providers in Russia to keep customer traffic up to six months. Companies will be required to do this from July 2018. Interestingly, the government has not yet determined the final storage parameters - in the first place, the terms and types of traffic. In October, the head of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, Nikolai Nikiforov, said that the ministry was proposing to reduce the storage period for users' traffic, according to the Spring package, to one month.

The deadlines for submitting documents to governments are still unknown - the Ministry of Communications does not say anything about this. According to Aliya Samigullina, a representative of Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, the rules that govern data storage are currently being finalized by the ministry.

As for other telecom operators, for example, MTS does not budget for the implementation of the “Spring Law”, since the order and the data retention period are not yet known. The same can be said about Rostelecom - the company's president, Mikhail Oseevsky, said that the company has different estimates of costs, but it is too early to say without approved data storage parameters. However, if changes are required in the budget, the company will be able to do this thanks to a flexible decision-making mechanism at Rostelecom.

“We have topical issues on which there is a discussion with the state concerning big money - this is both the“ Spring law ”and the law on the critical infrastructure of the RuNet. I can not say that today communication with government officials here is organized and implemented properly, ”said Mikhail Oseevsky.

About how much other operators plan to spend on the implementation of the “Law of Spring”, nothing is yet known.

Nevertheless, the approximate estimate of the costs of Russian companies providing communication services is constantly changing. In addition, experts assess the impact of the law on other areas in different ways. For example, the shareholders of operators will be the first to feel the influence of this law. Companies will either have to reduce dividends to a minimum, or the payments will be minimal. Also, companies will have to reduce the pace of construction and modernization of networks. Maybe operators will even have to postpone the implementation of projects for the deployment of fifth-generation networks (5G). At the same time, MegaFon claims that the items of expenditures on the development of networks will not be reduced, despite additional costs.

But there is a non-zero probability that telecom operators will raise the cost of tariffs, which will allow companies to start implementing the “Spring Law” without any particular problems. “In the context of fulfilling the requirements of the law, we are ready to spend on security, for example, 1% of revenue. If the execution of the law requires more substantial sums, then it is necessary to regulate the size of the increase in tariffs for subscribers, ” said Gevorg Vermishyan, financial director of MegaFon.

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