Operators have increased the term?

Almost half a year has passed since the president signed the so-called “Spring amendments”, which caused a hysteria in the telecommunications industry. The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media finally refined the traffic storage conditions. Actually everything just got worse.

According to the “ Spring amendments ”, operators and organizers of information dissemination will have to keep audio recordings of calls, the content of correspondence and other types of user communications from July 1, 2017. The maximum shelf life is six months. The bill, called the industry representatives impracticable and destructive, was passed by legislators easily and without hesitation. The ministries needed only to refine the details in order to sign the final verdict.

On Friday, December 23, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation submitted draft resolutions of the government for public discussion, which specify the requirements for operators of the “Yarovaya package” to be executed.
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The draft submitted for discussion spelled out the requirements for various types of communication. The first group includes operators providing local, intra-zone, long-distance and international telephone services. They will have to keep user conversations for six months.

To the second group, the regulator includes cellular operators and Internet providers. Here everything is more complicated. This category of the Ministry of Communications proposes to fix not the date, but the amount of stored information.

Here is a quote from the draft resolution:

“ ... 4. A communication operator providing local, intrazonal, long-distance and international telephone services provides storage of voice information, text and other types of messages for a period not exceeding six months.
5. A communication operator providing other communication services stores the content of messages in the storage of the following volume:
since July 1, 2018 in the amount of 1 PB per Gbit / s of capacity (throughput) of the communication node commissioned;
from January 1, 2019 in the amount of 2 PB per Gbit / s of capacity (throughput) of the commissioned communication node.
6. The request for the necessary content of messages is carried out by a team from the control point for operational search activities (hereinafter referred to as ORM) when organizing round-the-clock remote access to the message content storage.
7. Channels of communication of ORM hardware with the ORM control center, organized by the communication operator, must ensure that the content of messages is received by authorized state bodies in the process of performing the tasks assigned to them in the manner and cases established by federal laws.
8. The required number and type of digital channels, as well as the points of connection of the repository to the ORM control point, are determined by the authorized state body carrying out operational investigative activities in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation . ”

According to the calculations of the operators, the new requirements are the worst possible alignment possible. With a typical traffic profile of 1 Pbyte, such requirements are approximate storage periods of six months. Moreover, from 2019 the volume of traffic required for storage will double, which means that operators will be obliged to keep traffic for users for a year.

“I counted on the example of a couple of companies, the creation of such a data center turns out to cost an annual EBITDA, for this amount they buy ... and it is considered that the price tag = annual revenue is a good price. I consider impracticable ”

notes on the forum Nag.ru representative of one of the Tyumen providers.

“ Not only will we have to recoup the money in storage at the cost of annual revenues, so also the“ trunk lines ”will do the same. Those. in fact, we will pay not only our storage, but also the storage of highways (they will collect money from us)

Well, let's estimate. A subscriber with 10 Mbit of traffic is a cost of 2 * 2 (PT / Gbit) * 0.01 Gbit = 40 GB for such a subscriber = 120t capex (only 4 * 10G disks). And once in 5 years it definitely needs to be updated. This is only possible if the a / p is at least 2500r (about 10 times higher than the current).

But it is still seeds. In order to build all this you need to take a loan in the amount of almost two annual revenues for 10 years at less than 10% (or even 5%). Do you want to give such a loan? I do not see the forest of hands ”

user writes under the name Tosha.

Representatives of the big four also estimated the possible costs, which in any case turned out to be higher than the average annual revenue.

“ Such an approach very slightly reduces the forecast we gave for the costs of implementing the“ Spring Law ”- but the costs themselves will in any case be higher than the company's annual revenue”

explained RBC representative MegaFon Julia Dorokhina.

According to Mikhail Medrish, Director of Operation, Comcor (part of the Akado Group of Companies), it is incorrect to take into account the maximum capacity of communication centers, since it is almost never used to its maximum. With this approach, the retention of information can be even more than six months.

According to the head of OrderCom LLC, Ph.D. in Law, Dmitry Galushko, the Government by its resolution made it clear to the operators what the “rules of the game” were, so that the industry could understand how to further plan its own business.

The conclusions from the next “murderous” alphabetic composition of the authorities are disappointing. Small operators will be able to survive only if there is no control over the implementation of the law by the authorities. Otherwise, only large companies will survive and those who manage to unite. The cost of building data warehouses in any case will be borne by subscribers - otherwise it simply cannot be, this is the elementary law of the market. At the same time, operators do not exclude such a possibility that the right to manufacture equipment for data storage will be given to certain domestic manufacturers under the control of special services. In this scenario, the price tag can be significantly higher than that of foreign counterparts, which will only increase the financial burden on the industry.

In addition, operators will no longer invest in the development of their own infrastructure and will no longer put into operation new communication centers. After all, this automatically entails an increase in data storage. An industry without development can only expect stagnation and decline.

PS
At the time of writing, a promising statement by the Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov appeared in the media:

“ We passed the second iteration in terms of coordinating proposals between security agencies, operators and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment. In the first half of 2017, you can wait for the final decision on the mechanism for implementing the law. It is significantly different from the original version, we have found compromises. This solution will be more comfortable for operators and will ensure both the interests of security issues and the optimization of operator costs . ”