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Russian regulator to check raising of telecom prices due to new anti-terror law

A regulator will investigate all prices' change

MOSCOW, July 7. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) will check if the decision of telecom operators to increase tariffs is really grounded by implementation of the requirements of the anti-terrorist law package, Elena Zayeva, head of department of control of information technologies at FAS told TASS.

"If there is a raise in prices we will investigate it. We suppose that additional investments will be needed, but we can’t say about the volume, we don’t have the data for it," she said.

Zaeva stresses that checking the grounds of market players for price hikes is a usual practice for the FAS.

"The antimonopoly legislation sets the order for what should be inspected and how. A tariff raise is regarded grounded if its size complies with document-supported changes of costs," she said.

On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin signed the package of anti-terror laws, that was submitted by State Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya and Senator Viktor Ozerov.

From July 1, 2018, the new law obliges telecommunications operators to store data about reception, transmission, delivery and processing of voice and text messages, images, sounds and video for three years. The "heaviest" files - the content of messages, images, sounds and video - operators must store for six months. They are obliged to provide all this information on-demand to security services.

In addition to telecommunication operators the law also obliges Internet companies to store certain data. In particular, they will be required to store information about data transmission facts and data about users for one year. In addition, when using additional coding of e-messages Internet companies will be obliged to provide keys to decode these messages to the Federal Security Service. In case they refuse to disclose such information they will face a fine of up to 1 million rubles ($15,586).

Mobile operators earlier said that after the law comes into effect telecom tariffs may soar by 2-3 times.