PRESS: Quality of Russians’ access to foreign sites may degrade

MOSCOW, Apr 2 (PRIME) -- The quality of access of Russians to foreign Internet resources may worsen in the nearest time if load on networks of European operators keeps on growing, business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday, citing experts and connection operators.

State-controlled telecom operator Rostelecom has already faced problems in routing traffic of foreign resources, Telegram channel Zatelecom said. An operator representative confirmed that the company sees a mounting load on own network and on networks of foreign partners.

“A temporary slowdown in speed when accessing foreign resources is truly possible,” the official said, adding that the company is working on expansion of the European segment of the network.

A telecom source explained Rostelecom’s problems by the fact that the company does not want to raise capacity of “butt joints” with most of operators and providers of services.

“It happens because the provider wants to get payment for traffic at prices above the market from content and service providers. As a result, it’s cheaper for services to run traffic via foreign nodes instead of direct ways, which in the conditions of increased consumption leads to load on foreign joints of Rostelecom,” the source said.

Up to 30% of traffic of operators working with Rostelecom go through foreign joints, he added.

European providers faced problems first with the introduction of quarantine because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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