PRESS: Govt may delay costly clauses of data retention law

MOSCOW, Apr 15 (PRIME) -- The Russian government may ease requirements of the data retention law for operators and introduce a whole set of measures of their support, business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday citing draft orders of the Digital Development Ministry.

The requirement of an annual increase in storage capacities by 15% can be delayed for two years, and the services whose traffic has grown because of the self-quarantine regime can be excluded from calculation.

Operators think such measures would ensure stable functioning of networks for emergency services and state institutions, the daily reported.

Other proposed measures include lower fees for frequencies exploitation and a delay for tax payments.

In force since October 2018, the law obliges connection operators and Internet companies to store information on content of talks and correspondence of users for some time, which forces operators to spend much on equipment purchase.

Mobile operator MTS estimated its expenses at 50 billion rubles, and its colleagues VimpelCom and MegaFon saw them at 45 billion and 40 billion rubles, respectively.

(73.3150 rubles – U.S. $1)

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