Mincifers for six months extended an experiment to ensure free access to socially significant sites

The Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation extended for six months, until June 30, 2021, an experiment to provide free access to domestic socially significant Internet resources. As TASS reported in the press service of the department, the corresponding order was signed by the head of the Ministry of Civil Academy of Sciences Maksut Shadaev.

"The possibility of users of free access to socially significant Internet services is especially relevant during the pandemic period. The project demonstrates the demand for citizens. According to the information provided by the pilot participating, about 1.8 million unique users used free access to such resources," said the deputy head of the Ministry of Civil Academy of Sciences Oleg Ivanov.

Recall that in mid -January, President Vladimir Putin, speaking with a message to the Federal Assembly, announced the “Available Internet” project. Then Putin proposed to provide users with free access to socially significant domestic resources. At the end of January, it became known that, as part of the implementation of this project, from March 1, 2020, access to the public services portal and sites of federal and regional authorities in Russia will become free, but the corresponding government decree was not agreed on time, and the Ministry of Communications began to prepare amendments to the legislation that were supposed to enter into force in December 2020.

At the beginning of April, the Ministry of Communications announced a list of 391 sites - as part of an experiment that was supposed to go before July 1, MTS operators, Megafon, Vimpelcom (Beeline brand), Rostelecom, as well as Er -Telecom Holding (Dom.ru brand) were supposed to provide subscribers with free access to these resources. Providers must provide access to socially significant sites at a speed of at least 10 Mbit/s. If the subscriber tariff provides for a higher speed, then the operators have the right to cut it up to 10 Mbps.

Later, this list was reduced by more than 20 resources: sites devoted to health and medicines were removed from it, but added educational resources and sites of state bodies. On June 30, it became known about the extension of the experiment until December 31, 2020.

In July, the RSPP Commission on Communications and IT came to the conclusion that the providers of the home Internet for three months of the experiment on the implementation of the Available Internet project were not received by 190-220 million rubles of revenue. The additional costs of each participant in the experiment for the purchase and installation of equipment amounted to 30 million to 100 million rubles, and from 5 million to 20 million rubles for service and technical support. These grades were made on the basis of the data of the operators themselves.

The report of the commission also said that the total losses and costs of fixed communication operators can amount to about 6.8 billion rubles in the first year of the project launch, and then - 5.5 billion rubles annually. When connecting to the project of mobile operators, lost market revenue will be at least 110 billion rubles a year. Earlier, it was about losses of 150 billion rubles a year.

On December 29, the government introduced a bill to the State Duma on free access to Russian sites included in the list of socially significant. The document was posted in the State Duma database.

The bill contains amendments to the law on the connection, which is proposed to supplement the norm on subscribers with access to "sites included in the list of domestic socially significant sites in the information and telecommunication network" without charging fees. The list of such Internet resources will be determined in the manner prescribed by the Government.