Rostelecom Spends 7.8 Billion Rubles on Yarovaya Law Equipment
In early October, Rostelecom spent 7.8 billion rubles on equipment for operational investigative activities (SORM) to comply with the requirements of the Yarovaya Law, according to Kommersant. The operator signed a total of ten contracts for supplies from MFI Soft (worth two billion rubles) and for switching equipment, as well as for services related to the design, development, and testing of software from an undisclosed supplier.
Under the Yarovaya Law, starting July 1, 2018, telecom operators are required to store users’ phone conversations, text messages, images, audio, video recordings, and other electronic communications. The storage capacity was supposed to increase by 15% annually for five years. However, the government recently postponed this requirement until September 2021 as part of the economic recovery plan.
The annual increase in stored data volumes is considered the most expensive part of the Yarovaya Law, as it requires telecom operators to make additional investments in purchasing, leasing, and maintaining equipment.
To meet the Yarovaya Law requirements, Rostelecom had already purchased data storage systems worth three billion rubles in July 2019. The new amount spent on SORM is quite significant and is comparable to operators’ investments in upgrading mobile networks, notes Denis Kuskov, CEO of the TelecomDaily agency:
“And it’s likely that Rostelecom plans to cover not only its own SORM needs with this purchase, but also sees a potential opportunity to sell services to other operators, including Tele2.”
Given its scale, Rostelecom could, in principle, utilize the purchased equipment on its own, believes Maxim Koposov, director of Promobit (developer and manufacturer of Bitblaze storage systems). However, smaller operators will indeed need to outsource compliance with the Yarovaya Law, while Rostelecom can do this without any additional costs, since it already stores all the traffic passing through it, including that purchased by other providers.
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