The press service of the Ministry of Digital Development also believes that the new measures will not affect competition

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"The explanatory note to this bill refers to the instruction of the President of the Russian Federation dated January 12, 2022, but the text of the instruction is not provided. But in the text, Russian President Vladimir Putin set the task differently: to eliminate fraud on the public communications network, to protect citizens from fraudsters. Unfortunately, the authors of the bill have reinterpreted this task in their own way. They proceed from the fact that it is algeria cell phone number list necessary to reduce the number of telecom operators, that is, they want to create conditions that will eliminate normal competition that interferes with the monopoly - the oligopoly of five operators that have captured 85% of the communications services market. The President of the country did not set the task of suppressing competition to the Ministry of Digital Development and the FAS - apparently, there are interested parties in this, but this is already for the Prosecutor General's Office and antitrust professionals. Moreover, administrative liability is already provided for the substitution of the A-number - Art. 13.2.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses - for approximately the same amount, "the General Director of the Association of Telephone Operators believes communications (AOTS), member of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council of Russia Sergei Efimov.

According to AOTS, in relative terms, the share of operators violating the requirements for the use of SORM is growing. The increase in the number of violations is associated with an increase in the intensity of inspections: in 2021, their number increased by 250%, as stated in the explanatory note to the bill. Also, as a ComNews source in the industry noted, in terms of the number of violations of the regulatory framework related to the use of SORM, large operators are not inferior to small ones.

"Thus, the authors of the bill are trying to present telecom operators as malicious violators and the center of evil. The analysis provided makes one doubt this and ask the question, and by creating conditions for reducing the number of operators and reducing competition, do these officials have good intentions? Most likely, not. If they are simply not good with arithmetic, then is it worth considering their proposals at all? So the proposal itself to increase the cost of licenses and fines does not solve the problem of improving the work of the industry. Apparently, someone cannot effectively manage a complex system of the industry, in which 5,000 operators work, they are trying to leave only a few dozen," concludes Sergey Efimov.

Representatives of PAO MegaFon declined to comment. The press service of PAO Rostelecom limited itself to a statement that the company's legal department was studying the document. The other representatives of the "big four" did not respond to ComNews' requests.