Russia's disconnection from Internet impossible — minister

Russia will under no circumstances shut the Web off, while work of its Internet segment may face disruptions only in case of incidents or destructive foreign influence, сommunications minister Nikolai Nikiforov said on October 4 in an interview to Rossiya 1 television channel.
“Such disconnection is not possible under any conditions. Any scenarios, which are being studied, stipulate exterior influence on the Russian segment of the Internet. And here we should act in such a manner that the subscriber is not affected from the destructive impact,” Nikiforov said.
The government and connection operators are preparing a joint action plan for emergency and exterior pressure cases.

“These are organizational measures that will enable us to maintain the system’s functioning if we face an incident or a targeted destructive act. Moreover, in such a case, we will continue working not in an isolated mode, but we will keep in contact, at least, with those countries, which are our partners,” the minister said.
Nikiforov said separately that the tariffs for the fourth generation (4G) Internet connection in the country will not rise. Some media reported earlier in October that the minister had found the existing 4G connection tariffs too low and supported their increase.
He said that raising 4G tariffs was discussed in 2012, when operators were starting to develop the advanced generation networks.
“But after that we saw that competition on the market, and the Russian market is highly competitive, led to the fact that the 4G services are rendered at the same basic tariffs as all the other services,” he said in the interview.
“We are now in 2014. And we see that this increase did not take place. And the state, fortunately, does not control prices. It’s the responsibility of the market. Operators themselves set demand and supply, balance them. If (an increase in tariffs) was suggested, it would not be possible.