More than two-thirds of providers operating in occupied Crimea get Internet traffic from mainland Ukraine because it is much cheaper than the Russian one.
Rossiyskaya gazeta newspaper’s journalists informed about this fact quoted the sources in Crimea.
“About two-thirds of operators in the CFD (“Crimean Federal District” – editor’s note) are technically registered in the RIPE NCC international organization as Ukrainian operators while being Russian legal entities. RIPE NCC sets technical parameters of the autonomous system number for operators. This way they can freely pass through the Ukrainian filters, where there is no place for Russian companies,” the employee of one of the Crimean telecommunications companies said.
The president of the association of “Development of Communication and Broadcasting in Crimea” Sergey Shilo confirmed this information. He said that one-third of traffic in his company went from mainland Ukraine.
“This traffic is three times cheaper than the Russian one due to the shorter distance. This allows us to keep the price on Internet access services for our clients,” the company’s head said.
Currently, the Internet comes to the peninsula through three fiber-optic lines from mainland Ukraine and through one line at the bottom of the Kerch Strait from Russia. Laying the second line was started in 2015 and, according to the Minister of Communication and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Nikolay Nikiforov, it is almost ready.
