For substitution of the number of operators will be fined

A few days ago, Senator Lyudmila Bokova submitted to the State Duma a bill on the need to impose a fine on the operator when changing the number when making a call with a subscriber. The maximum amount of the fine is 300 000 rubles. For legal entities, the fine is up to 200,000 for the first offense and up to 300,000 for repeated violations, writes Vedomosti.

The senator believes that fines are necessary in the interests of the state and society. The fact is that in September-October, 186 Russian cities were attacked by “telephone terrorists”. Then the attackers reported by phone false information about the mining of shopping and entertainment centers, educational and administrative institutions. Such calls are made with the substitution of a subscriber number, which makes it difficult for law enforcement officers to find criminals.

In addition, number replacement is quite a common procedure for IP-telephony services, which are used for low-cost international and long-distance calls. In this case, the caller's phone number is displayed as local, but you cannot call him back.

According to a number of experts, if this bill is adopted, then communication operators will also have problems, which “land” the call to the subscriber. The bill does not solve the problem voiced above, because if necessary, an attacker can use a sim-card purchased on someone else's passport. But such fines can be used to cope with gray international telephone traffic (fraud). The fact is that some operators organize connections from abroad via the Internet, without using international communication nodes. As a result, the cost of the call is lower. According to the MTT operator, an international fraud causes Russian operators $ 9.6 million in damage per month.

If the bill is adopted, the situation in the communications services market will normalize, participants in this market are sure. In any case, all companies will be put in equal competitive conditions.