The Prosecutor General’s Office and the RKN are preparing an initiative to revoke licenses from operators for missing fraudulent calls

The Prosecutor General’s Office together with Roskomnadzor are preparing an initiative to revoke licenses from telecom operators that allow fraudulent calls. We are talking about amendments to the Law “On Communications”. However, the Ministry of Digital Development, which is also responsible for combating telephone fraud, has not yet taken part in the work on the initiative, and operators have expressed concerns about the opacity of such reviews.

Deputy Chairman of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council Artem Sheikin at the Antifraud forum on December 6 (Kommersant has a recording of the speech) said that the Prosecutor General’s Office together with Roskomnadzor are preparing amendments to the Law “On Communications”. The departments, he said, are exploring the possibility of revoking the licenses of telecom operators that allow fraudulent calls: “This will make it possible to resolutely stop and bring to justice unscrupulous operators.”

Mr. Sheikin explained to Kommersant that the initiative is aimed at expanding the list of grounds for revocation of operators’ licenses by the licensing authority: “We are also talking about the frequency and seriousness of violations.” Now telecom operators, for example, can be deprived of their licenses for violating the traffic flow scheme, the procedure for using frequencies and other conditions (see Kommersant on July 25).

The Ministry of Digital Development told Kommersant that they were not aware of the initiative: “The ministry has not received such a proposal.” The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to Kommersant’s request. Roskomnadzor declined to comment. In July, the ministry and the Federation Council discussed an initiative to deprive telecom operators not connected to Antifraud of the opportunity to provide roaming services (see Kommersant, July 3).

MegaFon told Kommersant that the idea was not discussed with telecom operators: “Conscientious operators are connected to the Antifraud IS, in our opinion, this is enough to combat the passage of traffic from spoofed numbers.” “The proposed regulation seems opaque and redundant, since the concept of “fraudulent calls” is still not in the legislation, and a large fine is provided for each identified case of number spoofing,” Tele2 believes. Rostelecom is ready to comment on the amendments after they are able to familiarize themselves with them. VimpelCom and MTS declined to comment.

Director for Strategic Projects at the Internet Development Institute, Irina Levova, also calls the initiative redundant. When all operators connect to the Antifraud platform, the number of fraudulent calls will decrease significantly, she is sure. Comfortel CEO Dmitry Petrov emphasizes the effectiveness of the existing countermeasures system: “If an operator deliberately acts in the interests of fraudsters, then the license should not be revoked, but a criminal case should be initiated.”

The head of the Association of Small Telecom Operators (which unites more than 100 companies), Dmitry Galushko, calls the initiative unfair: “If an operator connected to the state system, and it missed the call, then why should the operator be deprived of its license for this?” Operators have already complained (see Kommersant on November 15) that the Antifraud system “is not fully launched and makes mistakes.”

Alexey Zhabin