PRESS: Russian data retention laws to cost operators just 3 bln rbl

MOSCOW, Aug 29 (PRIME) -- Russian mobile operators will have to spend 3 billion rubles to implement the much-criticized laws on data retention instead of over 2 trillion rubles the companies announced earlier, the Izvestiya daily newspaper reported Monday, citing the laws’ co-author, senator Viktor Ozerov.

“People are threatened with figures; someone has already counted 10 trillion (rubles). Name the experts, let them show their calculations…Enough to scare people with the Ozerov-Yarovaya laws,” the senator, who initiated the measures in a teamwork with deputy Irina Yarovaya, told the daily.

“According to specialists at the government, expenses on implementation of the laws in the Moscow Region will be 287 million rubles, if we multiply the figure by 10 times, we will get about 3 billion (rubles) per year. These calculations could also not be quite correct after operators give their estimates,” Ozerov said.

“The paradox of the situation is that the laws, whose aim is to elaborate additional antiterrorism measures to protect people, society and the state from ‘the plague of the XXI century,’…are reduced to a scramble with cellular operators, missionaries and, in the long run, threats of a hike in tariffs for users of mobile connection and the Internet.”

Operators said earlier that implementation of the laws would force them to double–triple tariffs, but Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said there would be no increase in prices of cellular connection in 2016.

(64.7380 rubles – U.S. $1)

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