Beltelecom is going to monetize the Iron Curtain

The provider of all Belarus decided to keep up with the global trend of restricting free access to information and 05/15/2015 placed a tender for the purchase of equipment (hardware and software) to block sites and monitor users. It is worth noting that this initiative was already reported at geektimes , but there was no detailed information at that time.

And now, after 15 days on some sites the details of this tender began to appear, which reflect the commercial component of this initiative.

As reported on the Charter'97 website: “one of the lots of the tender provides for the supply of an agro-industrial complex capable of identifying and charging outgoing voice traffic (including IP-telephony) with reference to a specific user (client) of the Internet”. This information hints that after the introduction of the agro-industrial complex to users of Skype, Viber, and other programs that provide voice communications, we should expect appropriate notifications to pay for telephone communications at the monopolist’s commercial tariffs.

Also, the agro-industrial complex “should be able to replace advertising on the Internet resources that a specific user accesses with advertising that the customer sets”, the website of TUT.by reports, with this: “replacing both the customer’s fixed advertisement and contextual advertisement advertising based on a database for classifying users by the nature of the resources visited. " Ideologically, we get a system like with some OPPS or free Wi-Fi in the subway, when the provider embeds their banners, advertisements on the pages of sites, and now imagine that we have the opportunity to make such “feints with your ears” within the framework of the traffic of the whole country.

It is worth noting that according to Belstat statistics, 57% of households are connected to the Internet, and about 4 million people use the Internet daily.