The lower house of the Russian Parliament has approved a draft law on ensuring independence of the domestic internet. The chamber approved the bill on second reading, with few changes after its Information Policy committee cleared the legislation a day earlier, reports Comnews.ru. If the proposal is adopted, it would enter into force in November of this year.
The legislation aims to route Russian web traffic and data through points controlled by state authorities and to build a national Domain Name System to allow the internet to continue working even if Russia is cut off from foreign infrastructure, Reuters reports. In addition, the proposal for a sovereign Russian internet would transfer responsibility for blocking forbidden websites to the federal telecommunications regulator from telecom operators, and state institutions and bodies would be obliged to apply encryption standards of Russian origin.
If the measures are passed in a final third reading by parliament and approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin, they will become law and enter force on 01 November.
The telecom sector is concerned about the consequences of the legislation. Market players said that members of parliament haven't taken into account the numerous comments from the telecommunications sector. Implementation of the law is expected to cost around RUB 30 billion.
RIPE NCC, the regional institution responsible for allocation of IP addresses and other internet resources in Europe, has evaluated the dependence of Russia's domestic internet on foreign infrastructure, reports RBC. According to the study, only 3 percent of Russia‘s internal internet traffic is transferred using foreign resources. around 1.6 percent of the traffic uses Sweden-based infrastructure, 0.7 percent German infrastructure and 0.4 percent Ukraine infrastructure.
