Vedomosti: operators asked the Ministry of Digital Development to postpone the introduction of VPN fees from May 1 to at least September

Russian telecom operators discussed in mid-April a delay in introducing fees for the consumption of international traffic of more than 15 gigabytes per month on mobile networks. As Vedomosti writes , citing three sources among the participants in the discussion, it was planned to introduce the fee as early as May 1, 2026, but this issue has not yet been legally resolved.

Two of the publication’s interlocutors claim that operators are technically not ready to charge fees from May 1 due to the difficulties of setting up billing systems. They allow you to record Internet and call consumption in real time, take into account the tariff and write off money for it. Earlier, the BBC, citing a source, reported that Russians would be required to pay an average of 150 rubles per extra gigabyte of VPN traffic.

A source familiar with the discussion claims that “now everything is in the phase of regular discussions”: some are ready to comply with the requirement from May 1, while others need time until the fall. Another interlocutor says that several participants in the discussions asked the Ministry of Digital Development to give them a few months to sort out tariff plans and make innovations less painful for customers. According to his assessment, the regulator is planning “something in between to do it by May 1, by September 1 or by 2028.”

The question of what to do if international traffic exceeds 15 gigabytes if it is not paid for is also not regulated: reduce the speed to a minimum, automatically debit money from the account, or turn off the Internet.

Another source of the organization participating in the discussion emphasizes that it is technically impossible to carry out the settings in a month. In this case, the operator must notify the subscriber in advance that his international traffic limit is close to exhaustion and he needs to top up his balance. It also remains unclear what traffic should be defined as international, because some Russian companies use foreign IP addresses for websites and applications. At the same time, thanks to the CDN installed in Russia, Google traffic turns into Russian traffic.