Open Joint-Stock Company, "Rostelecom" has assured that Russian limits for watching of the forbidden websites will not touch on the clients in Armenia.
According to the law, Roskomnadzor (an acronym begging for its Bond movie cameo, but "short" for the Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications) now has the power to block websites or providers with content deemed dangerous for children. While this applies to images of child abuse, it also can be used against websites that may promote drug use or suicide. The next acts were regarding dissemination of illegal information. Incidentally, not the website was blocked but the IP address, because of which other websites were also often blocked because of having the same address. As a result, "Rostelecom" started drawing out another type of blocking that touches not the entire IP address, but only one forbidden page of the website.
Anyway, these limitations touched on the Armenian clients too, which get traffic from Russia. During the meeting with Armenian journalists at the Moscow office of Rostelecom, on 18 September, vice-president of Rostelecom, Evgeniy Sekerin, said that the company found such a technical solution for the Armenian users, which does not block the websites forbidden in Russia. "Nobody thought that the Russian sub-law acts will step in so fast. Everybody agree to block illegal websites, but nobody wants this affect the final users",- Sekerin said.
He explained that Armenian users of "GNC-Alfa" get the whole traffic through "Rostelecom". The great volume of traffic was the main problem and we had to find such a solution, according to which the decision of Roskomnadzor touches only Russian users but does not touch the Armenian ones, he said. Such a technological solution was found and has been in a testing regime since summer 2013, and will be probably brought into commercial operation in November of the current year. However, it has been functioning since summer, and blocking of websites does not touch Armenian users of "GNC-Alfa", and will not touch them in future, he assured.