It would be more reasonable to increase the size of fixed fines, says Mamuka Markhulia, Director of Corporate Affairs and Legal Support at Tele2 Russia . And representatives of Megafon and Rostelecom point out that turnover fines will be incommensurate with the violations committed by the operators. A participant in yesterday's meeting says that a representative of MTS spoke in the same vein yesterday at the public council: he cited the example of the operator's monthly income from cellular communications in the Moscow region - about 15 billion rubles. A fine of 1% of this amount - 150 million rubles - is incommensurate with such a violation as, for example, the lack of registration of one or two base stations. An official representative of MTS declined to comment yesterday.

A representative of Roskomnadzor proposed amending the Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO), speaking yesterday at a meeting of the public council on communications, said one of its participants and was confirmed by the deputy head of the supervisory agency Oleg Ivanov. The agency issues several thousand orders to operators a year when it finds violations in their work that threaten the "integrity, stability of operation and security of the unified telecommunications network" (the types of such violations are listed in the government decree of April 15, 2013), Ivanov says. But far from all orders are followed. In this case, the law allows two measures to be applied to companies: to collect a fixed fine from them (the amount is set by the same CAO) or to revoke their licenses.

But both measures are useless, Ivanov believes. In the first case, the operator usually pays a small amount and continues to violate the law; in the second, there is a risk of depriving subscribers of communication services. Therefore, Ivanov says, Roskomnadzor has decided to charge operators a fine of 1% of the annual revenue received from providing the service in violation. To calculate the fine, the agency proposes using income only in the region where the law was violated. The final decision on whether to fine the company or not is made by the court; from this point of view, nothing will change, the official adds.

But operators are against Roskomnadzor's initiative. VimpelCom press secretary Anna Aybasheva says that turnover fines could become an additional administrative barrier. The measures proposed by Roskomnadzor unjustifiably expand the regulator's powers, which means the level of corruption could increase, suggests Yuri Dombrovsky, president of the Association of Regional Telecom Operators. In addition, if the amendments are adopted, Roskomnadzor will have a lot of new work and will have to increase its staff and the costs of maintaining it, he adds.

Roskomnadzor has sent proposals to the Ministry of Communications. It is up to the Ministry to decide whether to implement the amendments or not, says Vladimir Pikov, a representative of the supervisory agency. The Ministry of Communications has not yet reviewed Roskomnadzor's proposal, says its representative Ekaterina Osadchaya.

Percentage from Roskomnadzor