⚠️ Cable Operators Warn of Shift Toward Gray Market Schemes
The Russian telecom market has ground to a halt in anticipation of sweeping regulatory changes. In the spring of 2026, industry media and professional communities began actively discussing a forthcoming draft bill from the Ministry of Digital Development, which proposes a drastic tightening of licensing rules for telecom operators.
Specifically, insiders report plans to introduce three tiers of licenses costing between 1 million and 50 million rubles, raise charter capital requirements, and restrict access to licenses for individual entrepreneurs. IT industry representatives and heads of relevant associations have assessed the risks that the reform poses to smaller players.
Although the Ministry of Digital Development has officially confirmed only that it is “developing proposals in cooperation with interested agencies,” and clarified in June that introducing the bill to the State Duma is not imminent, regional businesses remain highly pessimistic. The ministry justifies the reform by the need to purge the market of rogue companies that flout information security requirements and fail to implement the Law Enforcement Support System (SORM).
However, experts warn that the blow will land squarely on legitimate regional providers. According to estimates by the Rosteleset Association, around 80% of cable TV companies will find themselves in the risk zone due to their inability to meet the new financial criteria.
Dmitry Galushko, President of the Association of Small Telecom Operators of the Regions (AMOR), and Alexey Amelkin, Head of the MACATEL Association, agree that these prohibitive barriers will eliminate up to two thousand small operators and displace approximately 100,000 jobs. The new fees, SORM compliance costs, and a minimum 1-million-ruble contribution threshold to the Universal Service Reserve (USR) fund will prove unsustainable for them. As a result, small businesses will begin exiting the legal market en masse to operate in the shadows or utilize gray market schemes. This shift threatens to collapse adjacent software and equipment supplier markets, reduce tax revenues, and drive up subscriber tariffs by at least 2.5 times.
Dmitry Petrov, CEO of telecom operator Comfortel, urges the Ministry of Digital Development to adopt a tiered approach: pegging license costs to the size of an operator’s subscriber base and introducing a lengthy transition period to ensure that purging the market does not lead to monopolization and infrastructure degradation in remote regions.
Source: Telesputnik
